Behavioural responses of Lampropholis delicata across four groups sizes

Behaviour is a highly labile trait that can be rapidly modified to mitigate the effects of changing environmental conditions. Among the biotic and abiotic factors acting to prompt plastic responses, the social environment has been proposed as being one of the primary modulating forces on behaviour. Being part of a group has particular influence on the expression of risky behaviour in that added eyes and ears serve to decrease a group member’s vulnerability to predation resulting in the mean behavioural expression of behaviours such as activity and/or exploration increasing with group size. A large body of work has documented such group size effects. However, as this process may operate at the individual level it is unclear how the social environment affects the consistent expression of personality. Thus, we examined the interactive effects of behavioural phenotype and social context on the stability of individual behaviour in the delicate skink, Lampropholis delicata. Lizards were expos...