bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/028571; this version posted October 8, 2015. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. Crall, Souffrant, Akandwanaho & Hescock, et al. 2015 – preprint version Social context modulates idiosyncrasy of behaviour in the gregarious cockroach Blaberus discoidalis James D. Crall1,2,*, André D. Souffrant1,*, Dominic Akandwanaho1,*, Sawyer D. Hescock1,*, Sarah E. Callan1,†, W. Melissa Coronado1,†, Maude W. Baldwin1, Benjamin L. de Bivort1,3,‡ 1 – Dept. of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. 2 – Concord Field Station, Harvard University, Bedford, MA 01730, USA. 3 – Center for Brain Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. * These authors contributed equally. † These authors contributed equally. ‡ Corresponding author:
[email protected] Abstract Individuals are different, but they can work together to perform adaptive collective behaviours. Despite emerging evidence that individual variation strongly affects group performance, it is less clear to what extent individual variation is modulated by participation in collective behaviour. We examined light avoidance (negative phototaxis) in the gregarious cockroach Blaberus discoidalis, in both solitary and group contexts. Cockroaches in groups exhibit idiosyncratic light-avoidance performance that persists across days, with some individual cockroaches avoiding a light stimulus 75% of the time, and others avoiding the light just above chance (i.e. ~50% of the time). These individual differences are robust to group composition. Surprisingly, these differences do not persist when individuals are tested in isolation, but return when testing is once again done with groups.