Despite being genetically similar and being raised in the same environment, genetically identical Amazon mollies acquire various personality types. Furthermore, boosting social interaction opportunities early in life appears to have no effect on the amount of personality variety. The findings of a recent study conducted by the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) provide new insight on the subject of what causes vertebrate animals to be unique.
Animal behavior is influenced by both heredity and the environment, according to popular belief. But what happens when individuals with identical DNA are raised in identical environments? Do they develop identical behavioral patterns?
In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, a team led by IGB researchers Dr. David Bierbach and Dr. Kate Laskowski looked at this subject. For the first time, the IGB scientists were able to demonstrate that genetically identical animals develop various types of personalities despite being bred in nearly identical surroundings.
Exploratory behavior and activity investigation
The Amazon molly, a livebearing Poecilid species, was used by the IGB team. These animals are natural clones, which means that all of a mother’s offspring share the same genetic material. Three separate experimental settings were used using newborn Amazon mollies: The animals were housed individually and under identical settings from birth in the first treatment. In two other treatments, the fish were kept in groups of four individuals for one or three weeks before being separated. The researchers studied all of the Amazon mollies after seven weeks to see if and how they differed in activity and inquisitive behavior.
Individual differences in personality
Dr. David Bierbach, a behavioral ecologist at the IGB and one of the study’s two lead authors, says, “We were really astonished to observe such profound personality variations in genetically identical animals who grew up under essentially equivalent environmental settings.” Whether the development phase with social contacts lasted one or three weeks, the fish that matured in small groups showed behavioral differences of almost the same magnitude.
Individuality may be unavoidable, according to research
“Our findings suggest that other factors, such as minute differences in environmental conditions, which are impossible to completely eliminate from any experiment, or epigenetic processes, such as random changes in chromosomes and gene functions, must play a larger role in the development of personality than previously thought. Overall, our findings imply that these characteristics should be investigated further as potential sources of personality variety in future research “Dr. Kate Laskowski, a behavioral ecologist, explains. Individuality development in vertebrate animals may be an inevitable and ultimately unforeseeable byproduct of the developmental process, according to the IGB study.