Behavioural predictability in chickens in response to anxiogenic stimuli is influenced by maternal corticosterone levels during egg formation

Across species, prenatal maternal stress has been shown to create heterogeneity in behavioural phenotypes. Research has recently highlighted that individuals vary in how predictable they are in their behavioural responses. This within-individual variation in behaviour is likely to be of biological importance, since individuals interact with the world not only through their mean behavioural phenotype, but also through their full range of behavioural variation. Yet, the underlying mechanisms that create and constrain between-individual variation in behavioural predictability remain largely unexplored. Here, we estimate whether experimental elevation of maternal corticosterone during egg laying (to model prenatal maternal stress) can cause variation in behavioural predictability in a population of chickens. Offspring's behavioural predictability was quantified by testing them repeatedly (16 times) in a standard anxiety test (open-field test). Elevated maternal corticosterone resulted in less anxious and more predictable offspring compared to control offspring. These findings provide the first evidence that maternal corticosterone levels, via prenatal pathways, may influence multi-hierarchical behavioural plasticity by affecting both the magnitude and the predictability of behavioural responses. These results not only expand our current knowledge about the ways maternal stress can affect offspring's behavioural phenotypes but also suggest a possible proximate mechanism underlying within-population variation in individual behavioural predictability.