TY - JOUR TI - The structure of behavioral variation within a genotype AU - Werkhoven, Zachary AU - Bravin, Alyssa AU - Skutt-Kakaria, Kyobi AU - Reimers, Pablo AU - Pallares, Luisa F AU - Ayroles, Julien AU - de Bivort, Benjamin L A2 - Zimmer, Manuel A2 - Calabrese, Ronald L VL - 10 PY - 2021 DA - 2021/10/19 SP - e64988 C1 - eLife 2021;10:e64988 DO - 10.7554/eLife.64988 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.64988 AB - Individual animals vary in their behaviors. This is true even when they share the same genotype and were reared in the same environment. Clusters of covarying behaviors constitute behavioral syndromes, and an individual’s position along such axes of covariation is a representation of their personality. Despite these conceptual frameworks, the structure of behavioral covariation within a genotype is essentially uncharacterized and its mechanistic origins unknown. Passing hundreds of inbred Drosophila individuals through an experimental pipeline that captured hundreds of behavioral measures, we found sparse but significant correlations among small sets of behaviors. Thus, the space of behavioral variation has many independent dimensions. Manipulating the physiology of the brain, and specific neural populations, altered specific correlations. We also observed that variation in gene expression can predict an individual’s position on some behavioral axes. This work represents the first steps in understanding the biological mechanisms determining the structure of behavioral variation within a genotype. KW - high-throughput behavior KW - invdividuality KW - personality KW - covariation KW - neural circuits KW - transcriptomics JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -