Der Einfluss von Testosteron auf das Risikoverhalten
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
As stated in my orginal proposal “... establishing a correlation between certain genes and risk-taking is not sufficient; underlying proximate mechanisms must be examined in order to specify the intermediate pathway linking our genes to our behaviour“. This has eluded researchers until now, and within populations, a link between hormones and behaviour is typically not found. I think that the most important contiribution/finding to come from my Fellowship was to show a potential reason for this. To date, researchers tend to adopt a single, rather than repeated measures, sampling design. Single measures designs, by definition, do not allow estimation of within- (versus between-) subject effects. Given the extensive individual variation in endocrine responses across vertebrates, repeated measures designs have potentially important implications for understanding the evolution and maintenance of coping styles. Indeed, this is exactly what my experimental work with the sticklebacks has shown. Contrary to my predictions, testosterone levels were unrelated to risk-taking behaviour in an asocial context . However, building on my work undertaken during my Fellowship I suspect that testosterone plays an important role in determining patterns of shoaling behaviour. I have now designed and experiment and collected data to test this, and analyses are on-going. My research on risk-taking behaviour in both stickleback fish and shore crabs, was covered in the media: Autumn 2015 “Spineless personalities” Advances Wales Issue 77, pages 10-11 January 2015 “Stickleback fish equally capable of responding to threats, new has shown”, South Wales Evening Post
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
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(2015) Consistent individual differences in haemolymph density reflect risk propensity in a marine invertebrate. Royal Society Open Science. 2: 140482
Fürtbauer, I.
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(2015) Personality, plasticity, and predation: linking endocrine and behavioural reaction norms in stickleback fish. Functional Ecology 29: 931-940
Fürtbauer, I., Pond, A., Heistermann, M., & King A.J
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(2015) Visible Implant Elastomer (VIE) tagging and simulated predation risk elicit similar physiological stress responses in three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus). Journal of Fish Biology 86: 1644–1649
Fürtbauer, I., King A.J., & Heistermann, M.
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(2016) Environmental quality determines finder-joiner dynamics in socially foraging three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, June 2016, Volume 70, Issue 6, pp 889–899
Hansen, M.J., Ward, A.J.W, Fürtbauer, I., King, A.J.
