Individual variation in movement behaviour and its implications for space use

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Individual variation in movement behaviour and its implications for space use***     Animal movement influences many important ecological properties and processes, such as habitat use, genetic exchange between populations, species interactions, spread of diseases and invasive species, transfer of energy and nutrients, and risk of extinction. Many studies have shown that movement behaviour can be viewed as a personality trait which shows consistent differences between individuals that are maintained under different conditions, such as along an environmental gradient, between levels of predation risk, or over time. Movement behaviour may also be related to other personality traits, forming "movement syndromes" that can be defined as consistent associations of individual movement behaviour with morphological, life-history, or other behavioural characteristics.***     The main goal of my Discovery research program is to understand the biological mechanisms underlying variation in individual movement behaviour, using movement syndromes as a unifying conceptual framework to link movement and other phenotypic traits across different situations. This goal is supported by three objectives related to the following questions: 1) which individual characteristics are correlated with movement behaviour, and how strongly?; 2) do the relationships of movement with other individual characteristics influence ecological performance (growth and survival)?; 3) are these relationships useful to predict movement in novel situations?***     *Our work will focus on brook charr, Salvelinus fontinalis, a fish species of great economic value whose movement in streams can be studied using modern tagging technology that allows us to track individuals and locate them repeatedly over extended time periods. We will use state-of-the-art field and statistical methodologies in experimental settings to systematically quantify the strength, stability, and predictive power of movement syndromes across a range of ecologically relevant situations and to examine the relationship of the syndromes with performance in the wild.***     The ability to link personality traits to processes operating over larger spatial and temporal scales provides a powerful tool for understanding ecological and evolutionary dynamics. An improved understanding of movement syndromes will encourage the application of this approach in other contexts, including its use by managers to evaluate the effects of personality-dependent movements on population persistence, access to critical habitats, impact of invasive species, and disease propagation. This research program will provide training in advanced statistical modelling and modern tagging and tracking technologies to one Ph.D. and three M.Sc. students, as well as exposure to field research in behavioural ecology for at least five undergraduates.**