Data from: Is behavioural plasticity consistent across different environmental gradients and through time?

Despite accumulating evidence for individual variation in behavioural
plasticity, there is currently little understanding of the causes and
consequences of this variation. An outstanding question is whether
individual reaction norm (RN) slopes are consistent across different
environmental variables – that is, whether an individual that is highly
responsive to one environmental variable will be equally responsive to a
second variable. Another important and related question is whether RNs are
themselves consistently expressed through time or whether they are simply
state dependent. Here, we quantified individual activity rates of
zebrafish in response to independent manipulations of temperature and food
availability that were repeated in discrete ‘bursts’ of sampling through
time. Individuals that were thermally responsive were not also more
responsive to food deprivation, but they were less predictable? did
exhibit greater unexplained variation. Individual RN slopes were
consistent (repeatable) over time for both temperature (Rslope = 0.92) and
food deprivation responses (Rslope = 0.4), as were mean activity rates in
the standard environment (Rintercept = 0.83). Despite the high potential
lability of behaviour, we have demonstrated consistency of behavioural RN
components and identified potential energetic constraints leading to high
consistency of thermal RNs and low consistency of food deprivation RNs.