Many traits such as body colour are expressed differently between the sexes to maximize the benefits for each sex. However, this does not seem to be true for animal personality — at least not in the case of a hermaphroditic reef fish.
Dennis Sprenger of the University of Tübingen, Germany, and his team induced the dominant females in 25 social groups of the reef fish, Parapercis cylindrica (pictured), to change sex by removing the only male from each group. The team found that the more active and aggressive females became the more active and aggressive males.
Although aggressive behaviour is beneficial for territorial males, it is probably detrimental to the future reproductive success of females, the authors say. They conclude that such constraints make it difficult for selection to produce a behaviour that is optimal for both sexes — which could explain why variation in behaviour between the sexes has been maintained.
Ecol. Lett. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01819.x (2012)
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Sex changes but not personality. Nature 487, 142 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/487142d
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/487142d
