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- Thorlacius, Magnus, 1979-, et al.
(author)
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Personality differentiation along the invasion succession of the round goby (Neogobius melanostomus) in the Baltic Sea
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Other publication (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Biological invasions, or the movement of species beyond their native range to settle and breed in novel environments, are an ever-growing problem in many parts of the world. A particularly successful invader is the round goby (Neogobius melanostomus), a benthic fish from the Ponto-Caspian region that invaded both the Baltic Sea and the Laurentian Great Lakes in 1990 and has since spread throughout most of Europe’s river systems and into rivers surrounding the Great Lakes. During the past decade, evidence has gathered for the importance of animal personality, or individual specific behavioral traits that display limited plasticity, in the invasion process. Individuals that disperse have been found less social, bolder, more active and to have a greater tendency to explore novel environments. With this study we arethe first to show that round gobies from newly established populations (~4 years) are less social, bolder and more active than those from populations that are older in the invasion succession (>20 years), thereby showing that individuals in newly established populations are not a random sample from the source population. Additionally, all behaviors were correlated indicating a behavioral syndrome in which behavioral adaptation for dispersal (less social, bolder and more active) is dominant in newly established populations.
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