The role of personality research in contemporary behavioral ecology: a comment on Beekman and Jordan
The role of personality research in contemporary behavioral ecology: a comment on Beekman and Jordan
复制标题
人格研究在当代行为生态学中的作用：对比克曼和乔丹的评论
DOI：
10.1093/beheco/arx027
复制
发表时间：
2017
影响因子：
2.4
通讯作者：
N. Dingemanse
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
N. Dingemanse
在他们的综述中，Beekman和Jordan(2017)问道，动物人格研究是否为行为生态学提供了任何新的见解。这是一个重要而及时的问题，因为目前行为生态学中的许多研究都致力于这一主题，而它对行为生态学的贡献仍存在争议。比克曼和乔丹描述了他们如何看待该领域的目标、方法和成就。比克曼和乔丹的论文很好地说明了行为生态学家对于动物个性研究的学生究竟想要达到什么目标的困惑。之所以出现这种困惑，是因为个性在两个截然不同的研究领域中被用作旗舰术语。首先，行为学家和心理学家研究个体行为的结构，经常有目的地寻求与人类人格研究(方法和范式)的比较(卡特等人。2013年)。比克曼和乔丹批评他们缺乏对适应性假设和现象学方法的严格测试。他们的批评似乎是合理的，但更应该被描述为进化心理学领域的批评者。其次，行为生态学家之所以研究个性，是因为他们试图了解在何种生态条件下，选择有利于重复表达的行为的个体间差异。这一研究不是简单地重复以前的理论工作(例如，在最佳觅食方面)，因为它专注于预测重复表达的特征中的个体间(Co)变异，而不仅仅是预测行为(行为生态学中的常态)的表型(Co)变异，因此代表着我们在理解层级结构的表型特征(如行为)方面的明显进步。因此，人格研究不仅发展了一套适应性理论，而且实际上还提出了一套可检验的假设和预测，这些假设和预测已经得到了检验(如尼古拉斯等人)。2012年)，完全按照比克曼和乔丹提出的方式。比克曼和乔丹确实在很大程度上承认了人格研究在行为生态学中引入方差划分方法的有用性。然而，数量遗传学中发展起来的概念的这种整合，例如那些与反应规范、特征状态和间接遗传效应相关的概念，不应该仅仅被视为其他领域现有方法的简单应用，而应该被视为促进将数量遗传学理论纳入进化行为生态学研究的一种重要方式(Westneat和Fox 2010)。此外，人格研究人员对变异和协变在多个层次上的发生的关注，也使人们越来越意识到，我们的许多生物学假说涉及生物组织的特定层次上的模式(例如，Nicolaus等人)。2016)。例如，在维持生活史策略中的个体差异方面，权衡的作用意味着特别是在个体之间的生活史特征之间存在协方差模式(Araya-Ajoy等人)。2016年)，而行为生态学研究的规范将是使用简单(未分割)的表型数据来不适当地检验这些假设。值得注意的是，人格研究人员积极致力于在行为生态学社区内传播这种信息，例如通过为对学习或教授、分析和解释多层次数据感兴趣的行为生态学家制作教育工具(Allegue等人。2016)。从统计角度来看，人格领域也解决了反复出现的问题。…
In their review, Beekman and Jordan (2017) ask whether animal personality research has provided any new insights for behavioral ecology. This is an important and timely question as much research in behavioral ecology is currently dedicated to this topic, while its contribution to behavioral ecology is subject to debate. Beekman and Jordan describe how they perceive the field’s objectives, approaches, and achievements. Beekman and Jordan’s thesis usefully exemplifies the confusion among behavioral ecologists on what students of animal personality research actually try to achieve. This confusion has arisen because personality is used as a flagship term in 2 distinct fields of research. First, ethologists and psychologists study the structure of individual behavior, often purposefully seeking comparisons with (approaches and paradigms used in) human personality research (Carter et al. 2013). Beekman and Jordan criticize their lack of rigorous testing of adaptive hypotheses and their phenomenological approach. Their criticism appears justified but should rather have been phrased as a critic to the field of evolutionary psychology. Second, behavioral ecologists study personality because they seek to understand the ecological conditions under which selection favors among-individual variation in repeatedly expressed behaviors. This line of research does not simply replicate previous theoretical work (eg, in optimal foraging) as it focuses on predicting among-individual (co) variation in repeatedly expressed traits rather than just predicting phenotypic (co) variation in behavior (the norm in behavioral ecology), and thus represents a clear advance in our understanding of hierarchically structured phenotypic traits, such as behaviors. Personality research has consequently not only developed a body of adaptive theory, but has, in fact, also put forward a set of testable assumptions and predictions that have been put to the test (eg, Nicolaus et al. 2012), exactly in the way as proposed by Beekman and Jordan. Beekman and Jordan do largely recognize the usefulness of personality research in introducing variance partitioning approaches in behavioral ecology. This integration of concepts developed in quantitative genetics, such as those related to reaction norms, character states, and indirect genetic effects, should, however, not merely be viewed as a simple application of existing methods from other fields, but rather as an important way to help facilitate the long-overdue incorporation of quantitative genetics theory into evolutionary behavioral ecology research (Westneat and Fox 2010). The focus of personality researchers on the occurrence of variation, and covariation, at multiple hierarchical levels, has, moreover, contributed importantly to an increasing awareness that many of our biological hypotheses concern patterns at specific hierarchical levels of biological organization (eg, Nicolaus et al. 2016). For example, the role of trade-offs in maintaining individual variation in life-history strategies implies the existence of patterns of covariance between life-history traits at the among-individual level specifically (Araya-Ajoy et al. 2016), while the norm in behavioral ecology research would be to inappropriately test such hypotheses using simple (unpartitioned) phenotypic data. Personality researchers have, notably, actively worked on getting such messages across within the behavioral ecology community, for example by producing educational tools for behavioral ecologists interested in learning, or teaching, analyses, and interpretation of multilevel data (Allegue et al. 2016).The statistical angle to the personality field has also resolved issues that are repeatedly …