NSFGEO-NERC: Integrating individual personality differences in the evolutionary ecology of a seabird in the rapidly changing polar environment

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To date, studies that have addressed the impacts of global changes have mainly focused on linkingclimate variability and/or human disturbances to individual life history traits, population dynamics ordistribution. However, individual behavior and plasticity mediate these responses. The goal of this projectis to understand mechanisms linking environmental changes (climate & fisheries) - behavioral personalitytype - plasticity in foraging behaviors - life history traits - population dynamics for a seabird breeding inthe southern ocean: the wandering albatross. This project will also forecast the population structure andgrowth rate using the most detailed mechanistic model to date for any wild species incorporatingbehaviors in an eco-evolutionary context. Specifically, the investigators will (1) characterize the lifehistory strategies along the shy-bold continuum of personalities and across environmental conditions; (2)understand the link between phenotypic plasticity in foraging effort and personality; (3) characterize theheritability of personality and foraging behaviors; (4) develop a stochastic eco-evolutionary model tounderstand and forecast the distribution of bold and shy individuals within the population and theresulting effect on population growth rate in a changing environment by integrating processes from goals1, 2 and 3. To date, this has been hampered by the lack of long-term data on personality and life historiesin any long-lived species in the wild. For the first time ever, we have tested in a controlled environmentthe response to a novel situation for ~1800 individuals for more than a decade to define individualpersonality variation along the shy-bold continuum that we can relate to the life history traits over theentire species life cycle using unique long-term individual mark-recapture data sets for this iconic polarspecies. The novelty of this project thus lies in the combination of personality, foraging and demographicdata to understand and forecast population responses to global change using state-of-the-art statisticalanalysis and eco-evolutionary modeling approaches.