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

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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.