The role of social environments in personality-related settlement decisions in a wild passerine bird

社会环境在野生雀形目鸟类个性相关定居决策中的作用

• 批准号: 406544150
• 负责人: Dr. Benedikt Holtmann, Ph.D.
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Arbeitsgruppe Verhaltensökologie
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2017-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/406544150?language=en
• 关键词: role; social; environments; personality; related

Repeatable individual differences in behaviour (often referred to as “animal personality”) are ubiquitous among animal species. In recent years, evidence has accumulated that individuals do not disperse randomly, but aggregate in habitats that best match their own personalities. Such non-random assortment of behavioural phenotypes may have implications for an individual’s fitness, as well as the social dynamics of the whole population. While theoretical concepts of the interplay between animal personality, the distribution of behavioural phenotypes, and the social environment have been developed, their relationship remains poorly understood in natural populations. Here, I propose a project that aims to investigate how social structures within wild populations drive the assortment of behavioural phenotypes (and vice versa) and what fitness consequences result from such interactions. I will use the great tit (Parus major) – a key species in animal personality research – as a study system. The proposed project consists of two tightly connected research parts. First, I will make use of an ongoing long-term study of 12 nest box populations of great tits, for which personality traits and their distribution have been recorded since 2009. Specifically, I will examine how the composition of the local social environment affects the settlement and fitness of different behavioural phenotypes. Second, I will set up six additional experimental nest box plots to perform targeted manipulations of the social environment over a period of three years. In particular, I will use winter food supplementation to alter breeding densities, and remove specific territorial males of known behavioural phenotypes (e.g. aggressive vs. non-aggressive). These manipulations will allow me to test if individuals actively settle in social neighbourhoods, which match their own personalities, or whether settlement is a random process. In addition, repeated behavioural measurements within and across years will reveal if individual birds adjust their behaviour (i.e. within-individual changes) as their social neighbourhood changes. Overall, the proposed project will advance our understanding of how selection acts on behavioural traits and provide novel insights into the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of the spatial structuring of communities in natural populations.

行为上可重复的个体差异（通常被称为“动物个性”）在动物物种中普遍存在。近年来，越来越多的证据表明，个体并不是随机分散的，而是聚集在最适合自己个性的栖息地。这种行为表型的非随机组合可能对个体的健康以及整个群体的社会动态产生影响。虽然动物个性，行为表型的分布和社会环境之间的相互作用的理论概念已经发展，它们之间的关系在自然种群中仍然知之甚少。在这里，我提出了一个项目，旨在调查野生种群内的社会结构如何驱动行为表型的分类（反之亦然），以及这种相互作用会产生什么样的健身后果。我将使用大山雀（Parus major）-动物个性研究的关键物种-作为研究系统。该项目由两个紧密相连的研究部分组成。首先，我将利用一项正在进行的对12个大山雀巢箱种群的长期研究，自2009年以来一直记录了这些种群的人格特征及其分布。具体来说，我将研究当地社会环境的组成如何影响不同行为表型的定居和健身。第二，我将设立六个额外的实验巢箱地块，在三年内对社会环境进行有针对性的操纵。特别是，我将使用冬季食物补充剂来改变繁殖密度，并删除已知行为表型的特定领域男性（例如侵略性与非侵略性）。这些操作将使我能够测试个人是否积极地定居在符合他们自己个性的社会社区，或者定居是否是一个随机过程。此外，多年内和跨年的重复行为测量将揭示个体鸟类是否随着其社会邻居的变化而调整其行为（即个体内变化）。总的来说，拟议的项目将推进我们的理解如何选择行为特征，并提供新的见解的生态和进化动态的空间结构的社区在自然种群。