Effects Of Temperature On Personality And Dispersal Distance Of Mosquitofish(Gambusia Affinis)

Animal personality is the stability of an individual in terms of behavior,showing individual differences,and has important significance in ecology and evolution.Under the conditions of global warming,biodiversity is destroyed and population distribution will be affected.The changes in the external environment make organisms have to respond to this.Exploring the influence of early environmental temperature on personality is helpful to understand the process of animal individual development.Globally,the freshwater mosquitofish(Gambusia affinis)is widely distributed through natural dispersal and introduction.The proliferation mechanism of mosquitofish relying on personality in China and the world is still unclear.In this study,the invasive species mosquitofish was used as the experimental object,and the influence of the early living environment temperature on the personality and dispersal distance of the mosquitofish was discussed.This is of great significance for understanding the population distribution and the control of invasive species.In this study,newborn mosquitofish were raised at high temperature(30°C)and low temperature(25°C),and their shyness,exploration and dispersal distance were measured after sexual maturity.The repetitiveness(behavior stability)of each behavioral trait is studied,and the correlation coefficient between the behaviors is expressed by the rank correlation coefficient.For the data of body length,two behavioral trait and dispersal distance,the data does not conform to the normal distribution.The Mann-Whitney U test was subsequently performed to compare the differences in body length between sexes and between rearing temperature.The generalized linear mixed model(GLMM)with a Gaussian error structure was fitted to test how the two behaviors were influenced by rearing temperature,sex,and body length,which were identified as fixed effects in the models.Principal component analysis(PCA)integrates shyness and exploration into two independent principal components PC1 and PC2,and uses generalized linear mixed model(GLMM)to test the effects of feeding temperature,gender,body length,PC1 and PC2 on dispersal distance.The main findings are as follows:(1)In the low temperature environment,female fish showed shyness and repetitive exploration behavior,while male fish did not show repetitive behavior.When mosquitofish are raised at high temperatures,these two behaviors are not repeatable.In the dispersal distance experiment,female mosquitofish grown at low temperature showed repetitiveness,while male mosquitofish grown at low temperature and all mosquitofish grown at high temperature did not show repeatability.(2)There was no significant correlation between body length and shyness(r = 0.058;p =0.490).When mosquitofish growing at low temperature were tested for behavioral correlation,it was found that the shyness of both sexes was significantly negatively correlated with the exploratory distance.Females growing at high temperature also had the same behavior.When the individual is shy,the exploration distance is shorter.These two behavioral traits constitute a behavioral syndrome in this species.(3)There is no significant difference in the body length of mosquitofish raised at high temperature and that of mosquitofish raised at low temperature,and there is no significant difference in body length between the two sexes.Body length and gender had no significant effect on the average of the two behaviors.There was no difference in the shyness of mosquitofish growing at the two temperatures,but there is a significant difference in exploration.Mosquitofish raised at high temperature are more exploratory than mosquitofish raised at low temperature.(4)There was no significant difference in dispersal distance between female and male mosquitofish.Body length and sex have no significant effect on the dispersal distance.However,the individual dispersal distance of mosquitofish raised at high temperature is significantly higher than that of mosquitofish raised at low temperature,indicating that temperature affects the diffusion process of mosquitofish.PC1 has a significant effect on the dispersal distance.The above results show that the early living environment temperature can affect the personality of the mosquitofish and change the average value of its behavioral trait.In addition,temperature has a significant effect on the dispersal distance of mosquitofish,high temperature will make the dispersal distance farther,and the personality of mosquitofish will also affect the dispersal distance of mosquitofish.These findings may provide insights for understanding how the individual development of animals and changes in environmental temperature affect the spread of animals by affecting their personalities.This research can promote research on population distribution and has a positive effect on the prevention and control of species invasion.