PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Lartigue Silène
AU  - Yalaoui Myriam
AU  - Belliard Jean
AU  - Caravel Claire
AU  - Jeandroz Louise
AU  - Groussier Géraldine
AU  - Calcagno Vincent
AU  - Louâpre Philippe
AU  - Dechaume-Moncharmont François-Xavier
AU  - Malausa Thibaut
AU  - Moreau Jérôme
TI  - Consistent variations in personality traits and their potential for genetic improvement of biocontrol agents: <em>Trichogramma evanescens</em> as a case study
AID  - 10.1101/2020.08.21.257881
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.08.21.257881
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/12/22/2020.08.21.257881.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/12/22/2020.08.21.257881.full
AB  - Improvements in the biological control of agricultural pests require improvements in the phenotyping methods used by practitioners to select efficient biological control agent (BCA) populations in industrial rearing or field conditions. Consistent inter-individual variations in behaviour (i.e. animal personality) probably affect BCA efficiency, but have never been taken into account in the development of phenotyping methods, despite having characteristics useful for phenotyping: repeatable (by definition), often heritable, etc. We developed a video-tracking method targeting animal personality traits and evaluated the feasibility of its use for genetic improvement in the BCA Trichogramma evanescens, by phenotyping 1,049 individuals from 24 isogenic lines. We found consistent individual variations in boldness, activity and exploration. Personality differences between the 24 isogenic lines suggested a genetic origin of the variations in activity and exploration (broad-sense heritability estimates of 0.06 to 0.11) and revealed a trade-off between exploration and fecundity.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.