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

迄今为止，处理全球变化影响的研究主要侧重于将气候变异性和/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，个体行为和可塑性是这些反应的中介。这个项目的目标是了解环境变化(气候和渔业)-行为个性类型-觅食行为的可塑性-生活史特征-南大洋海鸟繁殖的种群动态-徘徊的信天翁的机制。该项目还将使用迄今为止最详细的机制模型来预测种群结构和增长率，该模型适用于任何在生态进化背景下结合行为的野生物种。具体地说，研究人员将(1)沿着害羞-大胆的个性连续体和跨环境条件表征生活史策略；(2)了解觅食努力中的表型可塑性和个性之间的联系；(3)表征个性和觅食行为的遗传性；(4)通过整合目标1、2和3的过程，开发一个随机生态进化模型来理解和预测大胆和害羞的个体在种群中的分布以及在不断变化的环境中对种群增长率的影响。到目前为止，这一研究一直受到缺乏任何长寿物种的个性和生活史的长期数据的阻碍。我们首次在受控环境中测试了约1800个个体十多年来对一种新情况的反应，以定义沿着害羞-大胆的连续体的个体个性变异，我们可以使用这种标志性两极物种独特的长期个体标记-重新捕获数据集来与整个物种生命周期的生活史特征相关。因此，该项目的新颖性在于结合了个性、觅食和人口统计学数据，使用最先进的统计分析和生态进化建模方法来了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.