Main findings
Ectotherms are, as indicated already by their name, sensitive to external temperature changes. In our new work, we show that developmental temperatures largely defines both the expression of individual differences (also called “animal personality”) and reversible plasticity in behavior of crickets. Developmental environments seem to have permanent effects on the expression of multiple behavioral components; where you grow up matters! Nerdy part Because of the almost universal statistical mean-variance relationship (Taylor 1961; Taylors law), it is unclear whether the effects we saw in the expression of individual differences and reversible plasticity are due to treatment effects on the mean trait expression. To break down the statistical association between the mean and the variance in trait expression, we estimated the coefficients of among- (individual differences) and within- (reversible plasticity) individual variance and compared them across treatments. We used mean-standardization (i.e. coefficient of variation) instead of variance standardization (i.e. repeatability) for variance components since repeatabilities are not biologically informative when compared across groups and when making interpretations about specific variance component (i.e. among- or within-individual variance). In the future work, I would encourage people to use coefficient of variation instead of repeatability, when standardizing variance components, since that allows better biological interpretations about individual differences and reversible plasticity. Coefficient of variation is well known in the field of quantitative genetics. However, it seems to be completely unknown to modern empirical behavioral ecology literature. We are actually in a process of writing a paper about it. I will write something about it also here bit later. Be, however, aware of the limitations when using coefficient of variation…we discuss about them in our new paper (link above). If you want to know more, I am happy to have a chat...just let me know. Cheers, Petri |
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