Animal personality and resource polymorphism: patterns, mechanisms, and consequences

作为人类，我们都表现出行为上的差异，这些差异赋予了我们独特的性格或品质，尽管我们的行为是灵活的。 行为科学家现在正在积累证据，表明同一种群的野生动物在个性特征上也不同，例如一般活动、大胆和在新情况下冒险的意愿。这些科学家正在确定导致个性差异的神经内分泌机制，并表明这些差异会影响达尔文的适应性。下一个挑战是评估个性差异对生态和进化学科的重要过程的影响。 我们对幼年小河鲑鱼的研究考察了性格差异如何影响动物种群分化成不同亚群的倾向，这些亚群在哪里、吃什么和形态上不同。这一过程被称为资源多态，通常发生在来自北方溪流和湖泊的鱼类中。资源多态代表了一种独特的生物多样性形式，可以导致新物种的进化。我们的研究将测试个性如何与个体溪炭的觅食、扩散和迁徙运动有关，从而与它们在哪里和吃什么有关。它还将研究个性差异的遗传和神经内分泌基础，以及这些个性差异如何与环境环境相互作用以促进资源多态。 在理解野生动物个性方面的进步要求科学家重新思考行为高度灵活的概念，在特定环境中存在唯一最好的行为方式，以及行为可以促进或抵制种群变化的方式。

As humans, we all exhibit behavioural differences that give us a distinctive character or quality, even though our behaviour is flexible. Behavioural scientists are now accumulating evidence that wild animals from the same population also differ in personality traits, such as general activity, boldness, and willingness to take risks in new situations. These scientists are identifying neuroendocrine mechanisms responsible for personality differences and showing that the differences influence Darwinian fitness. The next challenge is to assess the implications that personality differences have for processes important to the disciplines of ecology and evolution. Our research on young brook charr (also called brook trout) examines how personality differences influence the tendency for populations of animals to diverge into subgroups differing in where and what they eat, and morphology. This process, called resource polymorphism, occurs commonly in fishes from northern streams and lakes. Resource polymorphisms represent a unique form of biodiversity that can lead to the evolution of new species. Our research will test how personality relates to the foraging, dispersal, and migratory movements of individual brook charr, and therefore where and what they eat. It will also examine the genetic and neuroendocrine basis for personality differences, and how these personality differences interact with environmental circumstances to promote resource polymorphisms. Advances in the understanding of personality in wild animals is requiring scientists rethink the notion of behaviour being highly flexible, of there being a single best way to behave in a particular environmental circumstance, and of the ways in which behaviour can facilitate or resist population change.