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Utah's Foremost Platform for Undergraduate Research Presentation
2018 Abstracts

Do fish have personality? Repeatability of behavioral traits between sexes in the live-bearing fish Brachyrhaphis roseni

Teya Mathews; Andrea Monzon, Brigham Young University

Several recent studies suggest that individual animals have what could be described as 'personality'. My research will address whether fish have personality and the important implications if they do. Specifically, my project addresses whether personality is consistent between sexes. I also look at whether personality will be the same among individuals regardless of the type of environment, or in this case test, it is set in. These are important questions, as there is little understanding of how personality is differentially expressed between sexes and what the best methods to measure personality with consistency are. Personality traits can affect a variety of biological processes, including dispersal, competition, predation risk, mate choice, cognition and decision making, and even speciation. Previous work in my lab suggests that there could be differences in boldness between some Brachyrhaphis species (Ingley et al. 2014), but there was no evidence for differences among sexes. However, my preliminary work in B. roseni suggests that males and females differ in the expression of their boldness behaviors over time. This research will also extend our understanding of the origins of personality by focusing on fishes.