Data for Sagebrush: Consistent individual variation in plant communication: Do plants have personalities?

Animal biologists have recently focused on individual variation in behavioral traits and have found that individuals of many species have personalities. These are defined as consistent intraspecific differences in behaviors that are repeatable across different situations and stable over time. When animals sense danger, some individuals will alert neighbors with alarm calls and both calling and responding vary consistently among individuals. Plants, including sagebrush, emit volatile cues when they are attacked by herbivores and neighbors perceive these cues and reduce their own damage. We experimentally transferred volatiles between pairs of sagebrush plants to evaluate whether individuals showed consistent variation in their effectiveness as emitters and as receivers of cues. We found that 64% of the variance in chewing damage to branches over the growing season was attributable to the identity of the individual receiving the cues. This variation could have been caused by inherent dif...