OPUS: integrating ecology, behavioral syndromes and social selection

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While it has long been clear that some humans take more risks or are more aggressive than others, recent work has revealed parallel, within-species differences in boldness and aggressiveness throughout the animal kingdom. The broad goal of the project will be to increase our understanding of how individual differences in behavior relate to the individual's ecological and social environment, and how the individual's behavior and its environment interact to determine the individual's fitness (survival and reproductive success). Such knowledge will clarify how individual ecological and social interactions contribute to population level ecological and evolutionary processes. More specifically, this project will examine: 1) patterns in individual differences in behavioral flexibility in response to changing levels of danger or varying social conditions (e.g., group size, or sex ratio); 2) how individual differences in both average behavior and behavioral flexibility influence fitness outcomes like survival and reproductive success in different risk and social environments; and, 3) individual differences in situation choice (i.e., preference for different ecological or social conditions) and relationships between boldness or aggressiveness, situation choice, and fitness outcomes. These goals will be achieved by a combination of new analyses of large experimental data sets collected by the principal investigator over the last 25 years (using sophisticated hierarchical mixed modeling methods), and syntheses of relevant literature (on all animals, including humans) along with the development of novel conceptual frameworks for organizing knowledge and generating new predictions. The project will train several young scientists and produce both publications in scientific journals and teaching tools.