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

迄今为止，关于全球变化影响的研究主要集中在将气候变率和/或人类干扰与个体生活史特征、种群动态或分布联系起来。然而，个体行为和可塑性介导了这些反应。本项目的目标是了解在南大洋繁殖的一种海鸟的环境变化（气候和渔业）-行为个性类型-觅食行为的可塑性-生活史特征-种群动态的机制：流浪信天翁。该项目还将使用迄今为止最详细的机制模型来预测任何野生物种的种群结构和增长率，其中包括生态进化背景下的行为。具体而言，研究人员将(1)沿着个性的羞怯-大胆连续体和不同的环境条件来描述生活史策略；(2)了解觅食努力的表型可塑性与个性的关系；(3)特征人格与觅食行为的遗传性；(4)建立一个随机生态进化模型，通过整合目标1、2和3的过程来理解和预测种群中胆小个体和害羞个体的分布及其对种群增长率的影响。迄今为止，由于缺乏任何野生长寿物种的个性和生活史的长期数据，这一研究受到了阻碍。有史以来第一次，我们在一个受控的环境中测试了大约1800个个体对新情况的反应超过十年，以定义沿着羞怯-大胆连续体的个体性格变化，我们可以将其与整个物种生命周期的生活史特征联系起来，使用独特的长期个体标记-再捕获数据集。因此，这个项目的新颖之处在于结合个性、觅食和人口数据，利用最先进的统计分析和生态进化建模方法来理解和预测人口对全球变化的反应。

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.