Animals constantly need to evaluate available external and internal information to make appropriate decisions.Identifying,assessing,and acting on relevant cues in contexts such as mate choice,intra-sexual competition,...Animals constantly need to evaluate available external and internal information to make appropriate decisions.Identifying,assessing,and acting on relevant cues in contexts such as mate choice,intra-sexual competition,and parental care is particularly important for optimizing individual reproductive success.Several factors can infuence decision-making,such as external environmental cues and the animal’s own internal state,yet,we have limited knowledge on how animals integrate available information.Here,we used an entire island population(57 males,53 females,and 1,109 tadpoles)of the neotropical brilliant-thighed poison frog Allobates femoralis to investigate how 2 factors(olfactory cues and personality traits)infuence the ability of males to fnd and use new resources for tadpole deposition.We experimentally manipulated the location of tadpole deposition sites and their associated olfactory cues,and repeatedly measured exploration and boldness in adult males.We further reconstructed tadpole deposition choices via inferred parent–offspring relationships of adult frogs and tadpoles deposited in our experimental pools using molecular parentage analysis.We found that the discovery and use of new rearing sites were heavily infuenced by olfactory cues;however,we did not fnd an effect of the measured behavioral traits on resource discovery and use.We conclude that in highly dynamic environments such as tropical rainforests,reliable external cues likely take priority over personality traits,helping individuals to discover and make use of reproductive resources.展开更多
基金This work was funded through a standalone grant(FWF P 31518)from the Austrian Science Fund(FWF)MR was supported by an Erwin Schrodinger Grant(FWF J 3868)a standalone grant(FWF P 33728)from the Austrian Science Fund(FWF).
文摘Animals constantly need to evaluate available external and internal information to make appropriate decisions.Identifying,assessing,and acting on relevant cues in contexts such as mate choice,intra-sexual competition,and parental care is particularly important for optimizing individual reproductive success.Several factors can infuence decision-making,such as external environmental cues and the animal’s own internal state,yet,we have limited knowledge on how animals integrate available information.Here,we used an entire island population(57 males,53 females,and 1,109 tadpoles)of the neotropical brilliant-thighed poison frog Allobates femoralis to investigate how 2 factors(olfactory cues and personality traits)infuence the ability of males to fnd and use new resources for tadpole deposition.We experimentally manipulated the location of tadpole deposition sites and their associated olfactory cues,and repeatedly measured exploration and boldness in adult males.We further reconstructed tadpole deposition choices via inferred parent–offspring relationships of adult frogs and tadpoles deposited in our experimental pools using molecular parentage analysis.We found that the discovery and use of new rearing sites were heavily infuenced by olfactory cues;however,we did not fnd an effect of the measured behavioral traits on resource discovery and use.We conclude that in highly dynamic environments such as tropical rainforests,reliable external cues likely take priority over personality traits,helping individuals to discover and make use of reproductive resources.
