[Individual differences in behavior and mechanisms of ecological differentiation with fishes as an example].

In this paper we present a review of individual differences in animal behavior exemplified by fishes. Main approaches to these differences investigation are outlined. Such terms as temperament can be used to describe consistent characteristics of individuality in animals.

Individual differences in parental care and behaviour profile in the convict cichlid: a correlation study.

We examined whether individual differences in patterns of parental care relate to individual differences in situations involving novelty, risk and aggression in the convict cichlid, Cichlasoma (Archocentrus) nigrofasciatum. Individual differences in situations of novelty and risk could be summarized along two axes: Freezing versus Activity and Activity-Inspection versus Freezing. However, these factors were not independent and formed a single higher-order dimension of general activity.

Consistency of individual differences in behaviour of the lion-headed cichlid, Steatocranus casuarius.

The development of individual differences in behaviour in a novel environment, in the presence of a strange fish and during aggressive interactions with a mirror-image was studied in the lion-headed cichlid (Steatocranus casuarius, Teleostei, Cichlidae). No consistency in behaviour was found at 4-5.5 months of age.

[EXPR: a simple computer system for recording animal behavior].

A number of different methods for recording animal behaviour are briefly reviewed and the computer system "EXPR" for the ethological recording of the sequences of behavioural events is described in this article. The main peculiarities of the system are: (a) recorded data are saved to the files created by a data analysis package, (b) it is possible to record simultaneously behaviour of a number of individuals, which is crucial for the analysis of social interactions. The user can specify the options for different recording tasks through the setup file written with using special notation.