Developmental Environment Affects Risk-Acceptance in the Hissing Cockroach, Gromphadorhina portentosa Sandeep Mishra, David M. Logue, Ife O. Abiola, and William H. Cade University of Lethbridge Consistent individual differences in the tendency to accept risk have been demonstrated in invertebrates, fish, birds, and mammals, including humans. These individual differences have been associated with size, growth rate, survival, and reproductive success. Little research, however, has investigated the effect of developmental environment on individual differences in risk-acceptance. Competing hypotheses offer different explanations of how variation in the quality of the developmental environment affects risk- acceptance in adults. The first hypothesis states that individuals developing in poor quality environments take risks because such behavior is their only means of obtaining adequate fitness returns. The second hypothesis states that individuals developing in poor environments avoid risk because their poor physical condition makes them especially vulnerable to injury or death. We measured several forms of risk- accepting behavior (exploration, foraging, and recovery after disturbance) in male hissing cockroaches (Gromphadorhina portentosa) that had developed in nutritional and social environments of varying quality. Individuals raised on poor nutrition diets exhibited lower levels of risk-acceptance than those raised on high nutrition diets. Risk-acceptance among individuals that developed on poor nutrition diets was negatively correlated with body size. We conclude that quality of developmental environment affects risk-acceptance across behavioral contexts in male hissing cockroaches. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that condition-dependent vulnerability mediates the relationship between developmental environment and risk-acceptance. Keywords: behavioral syndromes, risk, shy-bold axis, boldness, personality in animals Consistent individual differences in behavior have been demon- strated in diverse taxa, including arthropods, cephalopods, and vertebrates (reviewed in Gosling & John, 1999; Sih, Bell, & Johnson, 2004; Sih, Bell, Johnson, & Ziemba, 2004). Individual differences can be measured with respect to a single behavior, but they are particularly interesting when they involve more than one behavior and/or more than one behavioral context (e.g., explora- tion and aggression). Correlations between behaviors across con- texts are called behavioral syndromes (Sih, Bell, & Johnson, 2004). Although traditional behavioral ecological models of opti- mality suggest that natural selection favors different behavioral optima in different contexts, consistent individual differences in behavior may constrain the degree to which individuals can exhibit optimal behavior in all situations (Bell, 2007). Therefore, under- standing the causes and consequences of stable individual differ- ences in nonhuman animals represents an important step forward in the behavioral sciences. An important axis of behavioral variation that has been demon- strated in many animal taxa is risk-acceptance. Risk-acceptance is defined as behavior associated with boldness, including explora- tion, food acquisition, and recovery from disturbance (Brown & Braithwaite, 2004; Coleman & Wilson, 1998; Sinn, Gosling, & Moltschaniwskyj, 2008; Wilson & Godin, 2009; Wolf, van Doorn, Leimar, & Weissing, 2007). Individual differences in risk- acceptance have been demonstrated in invertebrates (Sinn, Perrin, Mather, & Anderson, 2001), fish (Bell & Stamps, 2004), birds (van Oers, Drent, de Goede, & van Noordwijk, 2003), and mammals (Reale & Festa-Bianchet, 2003), including humans (Zuckerman, 2007). Although several variables have been shown to correlate with risk-acceptance, including size (Brown & Braithwaite, 2004), growth rate (Ward, Thomas, Hart, & Krause, 2004), survival (Dingemanse, Both, Drent & Tinbergen, 2004), and reproductive success (Both, Dingemanse, Drent, & Tinbergen, 2005; reviewed in Sinn et al., 2008; van Oers et al., 2003), little empirical work has been conducted on the role of developmental environment in facilitating the emergence of risk-related behavioral syndromes. Some previous studies have investigated consistency of risk- accepting behavior across the life span (Bell & Stamps, 2004; Carere, Drent, Privitera, Koolhaas, & Groothius, 2005; Sinn et al., 2001, 2008), but we know of only one study in which researchers This article was published Online First January 17, 2011. Sandeep Mishra, Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge; and David M. Logue, Ife O. Abiola, and William H. Cade, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Lethbridge. David M. Logue is now with the Department of Biology at the Univer- sity of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez. This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (RGPIN/6174-2007 to WHC), and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (CGS fellowship 767-2007-2501 to SM). Thanks to T. Andrew Hurly, Martin Lalumie `re, Christine Michell, Rajees Sritharan, Robert Williams, and John Vokey for their useful com- ments on the manuscript. VWM Reptiles (vwmreptiles.com) was helpful in supplying the study animals. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sandeep Mishra, Department of Psychology, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB, Canada, T1K 4W1. E-mail: mishrs@gmail.com Journal of Comparative Psychology © 2011 American Psychological Association 2011, Vol. 125, No. 1, 40 – 47 0735-7036/11/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0020656 40