Personality affects female mate choice: frogs displaying more consistent bold behaviors are choosier

Mate choice is an important cause of natural and sexual selection, and drives the evolution and elaboration of male ornaments. Yet mate choice decisions are often neither consistent nor uniform, and a range of factors have been identified to influence variation between and within individuals. A potential source of variation influencing preferences and/or choosiness is animal personality, i.e., repeatable among-individual differences in behaviors. Not only may individuals differ in average personality phenotype, but also vary in how consistently they display said personality. Distinguishing between personality and consistency is important because both aspects are potentially naturally selected traits that may yet influence how sexually selected ornaments are evaluated. Here we use a predator evasion assay to test whether there is variation in boldness among female gray treefrogs (Hyla versicolor), and then examine whether personality traits (spectrum of shy to bold) are correlated with c..., Uploaded here are two CSV files associated with different stages of the data collection and analysis; (1) assessment of personality via boldness and (2) relationship between boldness and choosiness.
(1) PERSONALITY FILE
Personality Assay – The personality experiment measured boldness using severity of escape responses to an approaching novel predator in Eastern Gray Treefrogs (Hyla versicolor). We confronted each frog with a slowly approaching artificial predator that recreated the shadow effect of a looming predator – a black square with eyespots affixed to the front of a wooden, wheeled children's \"Pull Along Duck\" toy. To begin, the frog was placed on a short PVC perch elevated and centered within a one-meter diameter circular arena. As the predator approached, we scored the following frog behaviors in a binary fashion: flinching, turning, hiding, and jumping. We considered behaviors that happened both before and the moment when the predator collided with the perch, although severity..., , # Personality affects mate choice: treefrogs displaying more consistent bold behaviors are choosier

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.44j0zpcm7](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.44j0zpcm7)

The files uploaded relate to the two main topics presented in this manuscript using Eastern Gray Treefrogs (\*Hyla versicolor\*); (1) if they have personality (boldness) and (2) if personality is related to mate choice (choosiness).

**Experimental Methods:**
To measure boldness, we used a novel experiment assessing the severity of escape responses to an approaching novel predator. Each frog was placed on a perch in a circular arena (1m diameter) with an attached runway in which a novel predator was pulled towards the frog. During each trial, different responsive behaviors (flinches, turns, jumps, and hide) were recorded in a binary (yes/no) style and also whether the behavior was displayed before and after the predator made contact with the frog's perch. If a frog did not jump before the predator made co...