‌The research by Sociality, Heterogeneity, Organisation And Leadership (SHOAL) researchers and published in Behavioral Ecology put three-spined stickleback fish in mazes and looked at how long it took a fish to find its way through the maze and learn where to look for a food reward.

They expected to find that bolder fish would move through the maze quicker but would be less accurate in their choices since they would favour speed over careful inspection of their environment, while shy fish would navigate more slowly but make more accurate decisions as they paid close attention to detail.

“We were surprised to find that in fact bolder fish were just as accurate and explored the underwater maze more rapidly than the shyer fish,” said Miss Diamanto Mamuneas, the PhD student leading the project based at The Royal Veterinary College, University of London; “Since we know that bolder sticklebacks emerge as group leaders and can initiate movement of a shoal, our findings suggest why it might pay to follow these types of individuals: the decisions of bold leaders are actually just as good as that of shy fish – but faster.”

The researchers say that though there has been a lot of work considering different animal personalities, not much has considered how personalities relate to learning or “cognitive styles”. Dr King said: “As the bolder fish sample their environment more quickly and arrive at correct decisions faster than shyer fish, it seems to indicate that animals that live in groups could have different ways of acquiring or acting on information.”

Miss Mamuneas said: “We still don't know exactly why animals have different personalities or what selection pressures maintain them but we know that they are widespread and that the proportions of certain types of personalities in groups may help all individuals in the group to survive better. In the stickleback and other social species, having a group composed of a few bold leaders and many shy followers may help with coordination, enabling quick and accurate decisions to be made in order to locate resources safely and avoid predators.”

 Published Online Early in Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/aru160

• Images can be downloaded from the following link:https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x2yymqnn5a1y1og/AACnyKdOMMVMWFLvJRvG_xlCa?dl=0

      All images should be credited to Andrew King.

• Andrew King, Swansea University – http://www.swansea.ac.uk/staff/science/biosciences/a.j.king/, email: a.j.king@swansea.ac.uk
• Diamanto Mamuneas, The Royal Veterinary College, University of London – email: daniel.strombom@math.uu.se 
• SHOALgroup – www.SHOALgroup.org
• Royal Veterinary College London – http://www.rvc.ac.uk/ 
• University of Cambridge – http://www.cam.ac.uk/ 

Andrew King’s research project on NERC’s Grants on the Web: Does diversity deliver? How variation in individual knowledge and behavioural traits impact on the performance of animal groups – http://gotw.nerc.ac.uk/list_full.asp?pcode=NE%2FH016600%2F3