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Individual versus pseudo-repeatability in behaviour: Lessons from translocation experiments in a wild insect.
Petri T Niemelä1, Niels J Dingemanse1
1Behavioural Ecology, Department of Biology, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Planegg-Martinsried, Germany.
The Journal of Animal Ecology
|May 9, 2017
Summary
Repeatability estimates in ecological studies can be biased by environmental variation. Translocation experiments, particularly for stationary species, help ensure unbiased repeatability measurements by assaying individuals across diverse conditions.
Area of Science:
- Ecology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Behavioral Ecology
Background:
- Repeatability is crucial in ecological and evolutionary research, reflecting developmental plasticity and genetic variation.
- Environmental differences can inflate repeatability estimates, a phenomenon known as "pseudo-repeatability," which is understudied.
- Flight initiation distance in wild crickets (Gryllus campestris) was used to investigate behavioral repeatability.
Purpose of the Study:
- To experimentally investigate upward bias in repeatability estimates caused by spatial environmental variability.
- To compare repeatability estimates between naturally moving and translocated individuals, and with forced-stationary individuals.
- To assess whether translocation methods themselves introduce bias in behavioral repeatability.
Main Methods:
- Repeatedly assayed flight initiation distance in wild crickets (Gryllus campestris) under three conditions: natural movement, translocation, and forced-stationary.
- Quantified behavioral variance attributed to individual, burrow, and residual components within each treatment.
- Compared repeatability estimates across treatments to detect potential biases from translocation or stationary designs.
Main Results:
- For adult crickets, individual and burrow effects on behavioral variance were similar between translocated and natural-movement treatments.
- Repeatability for forced-stationary adults was 31.1%, demonstrating upward bias in this design.
- Translocations did not introduce detectable bias in mean or variance of behavior; however, less optimal sampling (repeated assays at the same burrow) would cause upward bias.
Conclusions:
- Certain study designs, like forcing individuals to remain stationary, can experimentally bias repeatability upwards.
- Translocation experiments are recommended, especially for stationary species, to obtain unbiased repeatability estimates.
- Assaying individuals across diverse environments, as in the natural-movement treatment for adults, facilitates unbiased repeatability estimation.
