Individual Variation and Social Influence of Risk-taking Behavior in Bottlenose Dolphins

Taking risk is a fundamental aspect of decision-making, shaped by trade-offs between potential costs and benefits. Across taxa, animals often engage in risky behaviors to gain access to critical resources, such as food and mating opportunities. While risk-sensitive foraging has been more extensively studied in terrestrial species, the drivers and social consequences of risk-taking in marine animals remain poorly understood. We investigate individual variation and population-level consequences of risk-taking among bottlenose dolphins in the Lower Florida Keys, where risk-taking is expressed as foraging in extremely shallow waters and in areas with high vessel traffic, which increase the likelihood of stranding and injury, respectively. Using over a decade of photo-identification, foraging and social data collected under focal sampling protocols, we estimated individual-level probabilities of engaging in each risky behavior through assessment of behavioral repeatability. We found consistent individual differences among dolphins that suggest stable risk-taking tendencies. We then used a social network approach to test whether individuals with similar risk-taking profiles were more likely to associate socially. We found that dolphins that are similar in risk-taking tendencies formed stronger associations within cohesive social communities. These findings highlight the importance of risk-taking behavior in shaping social dynamics and, more broadly, provide insights into how behavioral variation may influence the adaptability of dolphin populations in increasingly human-impacted marine environments.