Jean-Guy J Godin

Carleton University · Department of Biology

Although visual sexual signals, such as ornamental colors and courtship displays, and large body size in males are attractive to females in numerous species, they may also inadvertently attract the attention of eavesdropping predators and thus may be costly in terms of increasing individual risk of mortality to predation. Theoretically, more color...

Due to its unforgiving nature, predation pressure exerts strong selection pressure on the behaviour of prey animals. As a result, prey are forced to balance the conflicting demands of successfully detecting and avoiding predators and the need to engage in other fitness-related activities such as foraging, mating and social behaviour. Here, we provi...

Keywords: behavioural syndrome boldness colour ornamentation exploration fish metabolism pace of life personality physiology sociability 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 consiste...

Although male courtship displays have evolved primarily to sexually attract females, they also generate inadvertent public information that potentially reveals the courter's relative sexual attractiveness and the perceived quality and sexual receptivity of the female being courted to nearby eavesdropping male competitors, who in turn may use this i...

Considerable interindividual variation in behaviour, including learning ability and personality, exists within populations. Recent research has suggested that these two traits might covary; that is, the expression of certain personality traits might be correlated with learning ability. We experimentally tested this hypothesis under controlled labor...

Within populations, individual animals vary considerably in their behaviour, including mate choice and personality. There is mounting interest in the potential covariation between these two behaviours within individuals, such that personality would influence mate choice. We experimentally tested this proposition under controlled laboratory conditio...

Copying the mate choice of another conspecific by a bystanding observer is a socially mediated alternative mating strategy to independent mate choice. Because increased sperm competition is a potential cost of mate-choice copying, males should be prudent and less likely to copy the observed mate choice of other males when the latter are more sexual...

Consistent between-individual differences in behaviour, known as personality differences, are heritable and have consequences for individual survival and reproductive success. Therefore, it is likely that personality differences are not just under natural but also under sexual selection. Indeed, the recently developed idea that individuals choose t...

A fundamental question in behavioural and evolutionary ecology is to what degree individual phenotypic traits are variable over time and across ecological contexts and whether they are correlated with each other, as (co)variation in traits determines in part their responses to selection and rate of evolution. A first step to addressing this questio...

Synopsis Stressed fish have been shown to have higher predator-induced mortality than unstressed conspecifics, suggesting a role for the hypothalamic–pituitary–interrenal axis in modifying risk-taking behaviors. Yet, there is also evidence of behavioral resiliency in the face of chronic stressors. Here, we tested the behavioral resiliency hypothesi...

The hypothalamic‐pituitary‐interrenal (HPI) or stress axis in teleost fishes produces their primary glucocorticoid, cortisol. Although generally an adaptive response, prolonged HPI axis stimulation can impair organismal performance. Previous work has shown that stressed teleosts have higher mortality to predation than unstressed conspecifics, sugge...

The hypothalamic-pituitary-interrenal (HPI) axis is centrally implicated in stressor mitigation in teleost fishes. Sustained HPI axis activation can be detrimental to the physiological functioning of an organism and can result in fitness-related trade-offs. Predator-induced mortality is known to be higher in stressed fish than in unstressed conspec...

Sexual selection should favour females that can assess the functional fertility of available sexual partners and avoid mating with recently mated, sperm-depleted males. Our current understanding of the sensory mechanism(s) underlying female assessment of males based on their functional fertility and avoidance of sperm-depleted males is incomplete....

Indicator models of sexual selection predict that sexually selected trait elaboration should covary positively with condition. However, nutrition might influence the expression of multiple traits, where high-quality diets may result in positive trait correlations and low-quality diets in trade-offs. Although previous studies have examined how diet...

Virtual stimuli represent an increasingly popular tool in the study of animal behaviour. Modern techniques have the potential to simplify and improve traditional experiments using live stimuli. However, the increasing availability of diverse techniques is associated with problems and limitations. Although many new methods have been developed, their...

In populations with male mate-choice copying, males may mitigate their risk of sexual competition by reducing their preference for a particular female in the presence of sexual rivals (audience). Because of the cost of missed mating opportunities from such an audience effect, males should reduce their mating preference to a greater extent in the pr...

The concept of behavioural syndromes (i.e. correlations between behavioural traits) has provided an important framework for understanding individual variation in animal behaviour and its link to individual variation in physiology and life-history traits. The pace-of-life syndrome concept posits that behavioural, physiological and life-history trait...

Although females in numerous species generally prefer males with larger, brighter and more elaborate sexual traits, there is nonetheless considerable intra- and interpopulation variation in mating preferences amongst females that requires explanation. Such variation exists in the Trinidadian guppy, Poecilia reticulata, an important model organism f...

Recent theory predicts that males should choose social environments that maximize their relative attractiveness to females by preferentially associating with less attractive rivals, so as to enhance their mating success. Using the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata), a highly social species, we tested for non-random social associations among ma...

Phenotypic traits of control male guppies. Mean (± SE) body lengths and body colour scores of the focal males and the less attractive and more attractive stimulus males in the paired stimulus shoals for the control Experiment 2. For each panel, the differences among means were compared using the ANOVA, following by the Tukey HSD test for multiple c...

Field study site on the Upper Aripo River. Schematic diagram (not to scale) of pools sampled for mixed-sex shoals of guppies in the Upper Aripo River, Trinidad. The identification number (P1–P6), maximum linear dimensions (width x length, in meters), and the distances (m) between each of the six sampled pools are indicated. Shallow stream riffle se...

Sensitivity analysis of the simulation model with variation in the number of males in the population. Results of a sensitivity analysis of the simulation model, testing for the model’s sensitivity to systematic variation in the number of males (N) in the ‘population’ whilst keeping all other parameters constant (i.e. ∝ = 0, ßC = 0, ßS = 0, ßR = 1)....

Sensitivity analysis of the simulation model with variation in the movement parameters for a population of 170 males. Results of a sensitivity analysis of the simulation model, testing for the model’s sensitivity to variation in the phenotype-based movement parameters ßC (betac) and ßS (betas) independently for N = 170 males in the ‘population’. Th...

Sensitivity analysis of the simulation model with variation in the movement parameters for a population of 50 males. Results of a sensitivity analysis of the simulation model, testing for the model’s sensitivity to variation in the phenotype-based movement parameters ßC (betac) and ßS (betas) independently for N = 50 males in the ‘population. When...

Sensitivity analysis of the simulation model with variation in the movement parameters for a population of 500 males. Results of a sensitivity analysis of the simulation model, testing for the model’s sensitivity to variation in the phenotype-based movement parameters ßC (betac) and ßS (betas) independently for N = 500 males in the ‘population’. Th...

Based on the phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis, sexual selection should favour females that can accurately assess the recent mating history of available sexual partners and preferentially avoid mating with recently-mated males [who may be sperm depleted (SD)] so as to minimize the risk of their eggs not being fertilized. This hypothesis has rec...

In most mating systems, males and females are commonly within signalling and receiving distance of conspecifics during courtship and mating activities. Although it is well known that females who observe sexual interactions between conspecifics will use public information obtained from these interactions when making their own mating decisions, much...

Disruptive coloration is a camouflage strategy proposed to function by breaking up an animal's boundary and mask its characteristic shape, thereby impairing its recognition by onlookers. Recent studies on disruptive coloration have consistently shown an association between putative 'disruptive' edge coloration and heightened survivorship, but the u...

Males in polygamous mating systems may inadvertently transmit information regarding their mating preferences to bystanding sexual competitors, thereby permitting bystanders to use this information to enhance their own mating success by copying the mate choice of signallers. If males are at risk of having their mate choice copied and consequently fa...

In recent years, considerable research interest in behavioral ecology has focused on characterizing and understanding individual differences in behavior that are consistent over time and across contexts, termed animal " personalities, " and correlations between various behaviors across contexts, termed behavioral syndromes. Although there is some e...

Mobile young under parental care have a high potential for intermixing with other broods, which potentially increases the costs to the foster parents. Here, we examined for the first time the genetic composition of wild-caught broods of the convict cichlid (Amatitlania siquia), a socially monogamous biparental fish, for evidence of brood mixing and...

Because antipredator behaviours are costly, the threat-sensitive predator avoidance hypothesis predicts that individual animals should express predator-avoidance behaviour proportionally to the perceived threat posed by the predator. Here, we experimentally tested this hypothesis by providing wild passerine birds supplemental food (on a raised feed...

Phosphorus has been identified as an important determinant of nutrition-related biological variation. The macronutrients protein (P) and carbohydrates (C), both alone and interactively, are known to affect animal performance. No study, however, has investigated the importance of phosphorus relative to dietary protein or carbohydrates, or the intera...

In species with extended parental care, mobile dependent young are potentially more vulnerable to predators when they stray and become separated from their parents. We would expect that the likelihood of, and latency time for, a separated young to safely return to its 'family unit' (i.e. parents and brood mates) to be, respectively, inversely and p...

Whether hiding from predators, or avoiding battlefield casualties, camouflage is widely employed to prevent detection. Disruptive coloration is a seemingly well-known camouflage mechanism proposed to function by breaking up an object's salient features (for example their characteristic outline), rendering objects more difficult to recognize. Howeve...

For many animals, the ability to distinguish cues indicative of predation risk from cues unrelated to predation risk is not entirely innate, but rather is learned and improved with experience. Two pathways to such learning are possible. First, an animal could initially express antipredator behaviour toward a wide range of cues and subsequently lear...

Although mate choice by males does occur in nature, our understanding of its importance in driving evolutionary change remains limited compared with that for female mate choice. Recent theoretical models have shown that the evolution of male mate choice is more likely when individual variation in male mating effort and mating preferences exist and...

The cues associated with social familiarity and genetic relatedness and how they interact to influence the formation of social associations among individuals, and thus group composition and dynamics, is poorly understood. Here, we investigated the concurrent effects of social familiarity and kinship on social affiliations in free-swimming convict c...

Males are generally expected to be discriminating in their choice of mates when females vary in quality and when under sperm competition from rival males. However, how sperm competition and female quality interact to influence male mating decisions remains poorly understood. Here, we explored the concurrent effects of sperm competition and female b...

The neotropical convict cichlid fish (Amatitlania siquia) is an important model species for the study of animal behaviour. It is therefore surprising that no genetic markers are available for this species. Here, we have optimised four polymorphic microsatellite loci for use with this fish, where each locus comprises between 9 and 28 alleles. We dem...

A major challenge in behavioural and evolutionary ecology is to understand the evolution and maintenance of consistent behavioural differences among individuals within populations, often referred to as animal ‘personalities’. Here, we present evidence suggesting that sexual selection may act on such personality differences in zebra finches (Taeniop...

The best-known interrelated mechanisms through which coloration can act to reduce predator detection rates of potential prey are background matching and disruptive coloration (Thayer 1909; Cott 1940; Kingsland 1978; Ruxton et al. 2004; Wilkinson & Sherratt 2008; Stevens & Merilaita 2009). With background matching, objects are difficult to detect si...

Size-selective harvesting associated with commercial and recreational fishing practices has been shown to alter life history traits through a phenomenon known as fishing-induced evolution. This phenomenon may be a result of selection pathways targeting life-history traits directly or indirectly through correlations with behavioral traits. Here, we...

Swimming activity, aggressive behavior, and upstream orientation of yearling Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) treated with 6.43 × 10−11 M thyroxine were significantly lower than those of control fish injected with solvent alone. Two concentrations of triiodothyronine (7.43 × 10−11 M; 7.43 × 10−10 M) caused similar but less pronounced effects.Because s...

Stomach analyses showed that pink salmon fry fed mainly during daylight hours in the littoral zone of Departure Bay and Hammond Bay, British Columbia, in May. Although the diurnal feeding patterns of the fish differed slightly between the two bays, maximum mean prey biomass in the fishes' stomachs occurred near or at dusk in both bays. Daily ration...

Male and female mating preferences are commonly inferred from association times spent with potential mates in a dichotomous-choice test. However, this assessment method is rarely validated, particularly so for male mating preferences. Using the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata), an important model species in the study of sexual selection, we...

Sperm competition theory predicts that males should be sensitive to socio-sexual cues that provide information about the risk of sperm competition at any mating and correspondingly adjust their mating tactics in a manner that maximizes their reproductive success. Here, we investigated male mating preferences in response to socio-sexual cues as pred...

Refuge use by animals provides greater safety from predation. A refuging animal continuously must decide whether to stay in the refuge or to emerge into open habitat. This decision may depend on its energetic state and vulnerability to predation, both of which can vary with individual body size. We experimentally tested the concurrent effects of bo...

In nature, social groups of animals are typically nonrandom associations of individuals. Such group associations may in part be based on social familiarity among individuals, acquired through repeated past encounters and behavioural experiences with each other. The factors that potentially affect the tendency to associate with familiar individuals...

The banded killifish (Fundulus diaphanus), with other freshwater fish species, is the second intermediate host of the digenean trematode parasite Crassiphiala bulboglossa. We investigated whether and how the shoaling behaviour of parasitized killifish is altered in ways that may facilitate transmission of the parasite to its final host, the belted...

A photoelectric system, designed to monitor continuously the 'spontaneous' locomotor activity of individual, juvenile pink salmon in the laboratory, is described and evaluated quantitatively. Data on the swimming behaviour of individual fish in the circular channel indicate that the design permitted salmon to swim freely in circuits without physica...

The temporal pattern and daily timing of sibling pink salmon fry emerging from a simulated gravel redd were examined in the laboratory under a 12 h light: 12 h dark cycle and at temperatures ranging from 3.4 to 15.0 °C. The distribution of sibling fry emergence was generally unimodal in time, but differed significantly from normality. The rate of e...

Pink salmon fry exhibited, on the average, an irregular daily pattern of swimming activity, and swam near the water surface at night (nocturnal rhythm of vertical distribution) during the 1st week after gravel emergence. The nocturnal rhythm of vertical distribution indicated a relative negative response of the fry to high light intensities. A shif...

At times corresponding to their juvenile coastal and pelagic ocean phases, groups of juvenile pink salmon exhibited diel rhythms of generally diurnal swimming activity and nocturnal vertical movement in response to simulated seasonal variations in photoperiod and water temperature in the laboratory. Diurnal swimming activity was synchronized with t...

While foraging for patchily distributed benthic prey in the laboratory, solitary and shoaling banded killifish reduced their per capita rate of feeding attempts and shortened the duration of their feeding posture (when sampling outside the food patches) in the presence of a predatory brook charr. This presumably allowed more time for predator vigil...

Threespine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus L.) parasitized by the cestode Schistocephalus solidus (Miiller) have a greater need for energy than uninfected fish, and therefore should be hungrier and more willing to compromise safety from predation for foraging gains. We hypothesized that the magnitude of this trade-off is directly related to th...

In order to investigate any size-dependent differences between behavioural patterns, wild-caught Hart's rivulus Rivulus hartii of varying sizes were exposed to chemical alarm cues extracted from the skin of conspecifics or heterospecific Poecilia reticulata, or a tank water control, in a series of laboratory trials. In response to conspecific alarm...

Banded killifish (Fundulus diaphanus) were presented individually with a choice of shoaling with either of two stimulus shoals which differed in shoal size, species composition, and fish body size, before and after a simulated avian predator attack. When threatened, test fish preferred to shoal with the larger of two conspecific shoals, but only if...

Banded killifish, Fundulus diaphanus, were presented individually with a choice of ‘shoaling’ with either of two conspecific stimulus shoals, one consisting of fish with externally visible black spots (indicating the presence of a parasitic trematode worm, Crassiphiala bulboglossa), the other consisting of fish without such spots. Both parasitized...

The potential influence of social familiarity in shoal-choice decisions was investigated in two sympatric species of north temperate fishes, juvenile banded killifish Fundulus diaphanus and juvenile bluegill sunfish Lepomis macrochirus. Groups of socially familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics were formed in the laboratory using wild-caught fishes. J...

Within freshwater fishes, closely related species produce alarm cues that are chemically similar, leading to conserved antipredator responses. Similar conservation trends are predicted for species with geographically isolated populations. Here, we tested this hypothesis with the guppy (Poecilia reticulata Peters, 1859) from two populations within t...

Many fish species exhibit size-assortative shoaling, which is often thought to be driven by predation risk. Recent fieldwork has revealed that guppies (Poecilia reticulata) are more size assorted in high-predation populations than in low-predation ones. However, size assortment does nonetheless occur in some low-predation populations, suggesting th...

Animals are known to exhibit ‘personality’; that is, individual differences in behaviour that are consistent across time and/or situations. One axis of personality of particular importance for behavioural ecology is boldness, which can be defined as the tendency of an individual to take risks. The relationship between individual personality and fit...

Intermittent locomotion, characterized by moves interspersed with pauses, is a common pattern of locomotion in animals, but its ecological and evolutionary significance relative to continuous locomotion remains poorly understood. Although many studies have examined individual differences in both intermittent locomotion and boldness separately, to o...

Response delays to predator attack may be adaptive, suggesting that latency to respond does not always reflect predator detection time, but can be a decision based on starvation-predation risk trade-offs. In birds, some anti-predator behaviours have been shown to be correlated with personality traits such as activity level and exploration. Here, we...

The social experiences of individuals can influence their mate-choice decisions. Mate-choice copying is considered to have occurred if an individual's observation of a sexual interaction between a male and a female increases its likelihood of subsequently preferring the individual observed mating. Although such copying behaviour has been documented...

Female mate-choice copying is a social learning phenomenon whereby a female's observation of a successful sexual interaction between a male and another female increases her likelihood of subsequently preferring that male. Although mate-choice copying has been documented in several vertebrate species, to our knowledge it has not yet been investigate...

In recent years, evidence for interindividual variation in "personality" within animal populations has been accumulating. Personality is defined as consistency in an individual's behavioral responses over time and/or across situations. One personality trait that has potentially far-reaching implications for behavioral ecology, and may provide insig...

The antipredator behaviour of prey organisms is shaped by a series of threat-sensitive trade-offs between the benefits associated with successful predator avoidance and a suite of other fitness-related behaviours such as foraging, mating and territorial defence. Recent research has shown that the overall intensity of antipredator response and the p...

The natural resting orientations of several species of nocturnal moth on tree trunks were recorded over a three-month period in eastern Ontario, Canada. Moths from certain genera exhibited resting orientation distributions that differed significantly from random, whereas others did not. In particular, Catocala spp. collectively tended to orient ver...

In some species, female mate choice is non-independent as, under certain circumstances, females may copy the mate choice of other nearby females. One standard experimental protocol used to test for mate-choice copying is the mate-choice ‘reversal’ protocol. In this protocol, a focal female is allowed to choose between two males as potential mates a...

Male mate choice has evolved in many species in which female fecundity increases with body size. In these species, males are thought to have been selected to favour mating with large females over smaller ones, thereby potentially increasing their reproductive success. While male mate choice is known to occur, it is less well studied than female mat...

We investigated spatial distribution of fishes and decapods in eelgrass (Zostera marina L.) and non-vegetated sandy habitats in Kouchibouguac Estuary, New Brunswick, Canada. During the ice-free season in 1999 and 2000, mobile fauna were sampled using fyke nets, minnow traps and an epibenthic sled. In general, fishes and decapods were more abundant...