The influence of partner presence and association strength on neophobia in tokay geckos

Abstract

Neophobia, the avoidance of a novel stimulus, demonstrates the cognitive process of distinguishing novelty from familiarity. Different factors affect neophobia such as evolutionary background, cognitive skills or the social and non-social environment. Individuals from social species often change their neophobic response depending on the presence of a conspecific. Their response might even depend on their social relationship but the directionality of the change varies. To better understand the role of the social environment for neophobia, we tested the effect of the presence/ absence of a mating partner and pair association strength on neophobia across three contexts in the tokay gecko (Gekko gecko), a facultative social species with independent offspring. Geckos expressed neophobia similarly when housed singly and in pairs. However, we found that pairs that associated less entered a novel environment faster than those with a strong association while in pair housing. Our study adds important new insights into the relationship between social context and neophobia in a social lizard. Our results highlight that, even in species that express little affiliative behaviour, presence/ absence of a conspecific is insufficient to understand the complex relationship between the social environment and neophobia.