Individual Behavioral Variability Across Time and Contexts in Dendrobates tinctorius Poison Frogs

Abstract

Abstract Consistent individual differences in behavior (aka, “animal personality”) have consequences for individual fitness, adaptive trajectories, and species’ persistence. Such differences have been documented across a wide range of animals, though amphibians are generally underrepresented in this research area. The aim of our study was to examine consistent individual differences in poison frogs (Dendrobates tinctorius). We evaluated repeatability in behaviors including activity, exploration, and boldness to assess consistency of behaviors across different temporal, experimental, and environmental contexts. We found repeatability in activity and exploration across time and contexts. In contrast, we observed context-specific behavior for our metrics of boldness, with consistent individual differences only for some measures. Further, while activity and exploration displayed consistent correlations across contexts, relationships between activity and boldness were context dependent. Our findings document the presence of consistent individual differences in behavior in poison frogs, challenging historic assumptions about the simplicity of amphibian behavior. Nonetheless, our approach testing the same individuals across multiple time points and assays also reveals context-dependent differences, highlighting the complex relationship between consistent individual differences and context-specific responses in animal behavior.