Combining animal personalities with transcriptomics resolves individual variation within a wild-type zebrafish...

Area of Science:

• Behavioral Ecology
• Neurogenetics
• Population Genomics

Background:

• Understanding biological adaptation requires resolving phenotype variation in response to environmental changes.
• Linking adaptive transcriptome changes to functional significance for individuals is a key challenge.
• Interpreting biological variation and its adaptive significance within populations remains under-addressed.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the contribution of animal personality to gene expression variation in a zebrafish population.
• To identify molecular underpinnings of consistent behavioral differences between individuals.
• To map brain-specific gene expression differences related to personality and adaptation.

Main Methods:

• Screening zebrafish for consistent proactive and reactive behavioral phenotypes.
• Analyzing brain transcriptome variation in relation to identified personality types.
• Mapping gene expression differences to specific brain regions and predicting protein-protein interactions.

Main Results:

• Animal personality variation accounts for over 9% of the observed variation in the brain transcriptome.
• Proactive and reactive zebrafish exhibit consistent behavioral differences linked to distinct gene networks.
• Gene expression differences related to personality were localized to specific brain regions.

Conclusions:

• Animal personality is a significant factor in explaining gene expression variation within a population.
• Consistent behavioral traits are associated with underlying, brain-region-specific molecular differences.
• This study provides a foundation for understanding adaptive molecular events coordinated within populations based on individual variation.