DOI: 10.5061/dryad.m37pvmd5h
title: Pace-of-life syndrome: linking personality, metabolism and colour ornamentation in male guppies

description: Within populations, there commonly exists consistent among-individual
 differences in behaviour. As a potential mechanism maintaining this
 variation, the pace-of-life-syndrome (POLS) hypothesis posits that
 consistent differences in the behaviour of individuals (i.e.
 ‘personality’) are intercorrelated and have coevolved with consistent
 individual differences in metabolism and life-history traits. Here, using
 adult male guppies, Poecilia reticulata, we tested under
 laboratory conditions (1) whether behavioural and metabolic traits vary
 consistently among individuals over time (≤ 7 days) and (2) the POLS
 prediction that repeatable behavioural traits should be intercorrelated
 with each other and with repeatable metabolic rate at the among-individual
 level. Furthermore, based on indicator models of sexual selection, we
 expected that sexually selected male colour ornamentation would predict
 individual personality and metabolic rate. We repeatedly assayed three
 behavioural traits (sociability, boldness, exploration) and three
 metabolic traits (resting metabolic rate, maximal metabolic rate, aerobic
 scope) in a set of males that varied in body size and colour
 ornamentation. All behavioural trait measures were repeatable, consistent
 with individual personality. Of the three metabolic traits, only resting
 metabolic rate (RMR) was repeatable. Behavioural trait measures were
 significantly intercorrelated and thus integrated in a behavioural
 syndrome. More ‘proactive’ males were bolder, more exploratory and more
 sociable than ‘reactive’ ones. However, contrary to the POLS
 hypothesis, RMRwas not significantly correlated with any of the
 behavioural trait measures, suggesting that consistent individual
 differences in RMR do not drive or support differences in personality, or
 vice versa. Male colour ornamentation did not covary with behaviour or RMR
 and thus does not appear to be a reliable predictor of either behavioural
 or metabolic phenotypes. We therefore did not find any compelling support
 for the POLS hypothesis, suggesting that individual differences
 in metabolism do not underlie the evolution and maintenance of
 among-individual  behavioural variation in our study
 population.
description: This dataset was collected by observing/video filming individual
 test guppies in different types of aquaria (depending on the experimental
 test) under standardized laboratory conditions. The behaviour
 (sociability, boldness, exploration) of individual fish was quantified
 from the video films (as described in details in our paper). The resting
 and active metabolic rate (oxygen uptake rate) of the same individual test
 were also recorded using respirometry.  All behaviour and metabolism data
 were analyzed statistically using the open-source R statistical framework,
 as described in detail in our paper.
description: Only Microsoft Excel is required to open the Dataset.xls
 file. The Dataset file is an Excel data file(.xls) in
 support of all the figures and tables in the paper by Godin et al. (2022).
 Animal Behaviour.  In this Excel data file, the original raw data are
 organized in discrete columns (representing variables) in Sheet 1, and the
 description of each column header title can be found in Sheet 2 (see also
 our ReadMe.txt file).