Insights into adaptive behavioural plasticity from the guppy model system.

Behavioural plasticity allows organisms to respond to environmental challenges on short time scales. But what are the ecological and evolutionary processes that underlie behavioural plasticity? The answer to this question is complex and requires experimental dissection of the physiological, neural and molecular mechanisms contributing to behavioural plasticity as well as an understanding of the ecological and evolutionary contexts under which behavioural plasticity is adaptive. Here, we discuss key insights that research with Trinidadian guppies has provided on the underpinnings of adaptive behavioural plasticity.

Alarm cues and alarmed conspecifics: neural activity during social learning from different cues in Trinidadian guppies.

Learning to respond appropriately to novel dangers is often essential to survival and success, but carries risks. Learning about novel threats from others (social learning) can reduce these risks. Many species, including the Trinidadian guppy (), respond defensively to both conspecific chemical alarm cues and conspecific anti-predator behaviours, and in other fish such social information can lead to a learned aversion to novel threats.

Behavioural responses to video and live presentations of females reveal a dissociation between performance and motivational aspects of birdsong.

Understanding the regulation of social behavioural expression requires insight into motivational and performance aspects. While a number of studies have independently assessed these aspects of social behaviours, few have examined how they relate to each other. By comparing behavioural variation in response to live or video presentations of conspecific females, we analysed how variation in the motivation to produce courtship song covaries with variation in performance aspects of courtship song in male zebra finches ().