Organisms Commons^™

Personality Affects Learning And Trade-Offs Between Private And Social Information In Guppies, Poecilia Reticulate, Larissa Trompf, Culum Brown

Culum Brown, PhD

The acquisition of information such as the location and quality of food, mates or shelter is a key survival requirement for animals. Individuals can acquire information through personal experience (private information) or through observing and interacting with others (social information). Environmental spatial and temporal heterogeneity can mean that sometimes social information conflicts with private knowledge. We tested how personality affected the importance placed on public versus private information in wild female guppies when these two information sources came into conflict. We found that boldness and sociality affected decisions to use conflicting social and private information. Bolder females used social information …