OPUS: integrating ecology, behavioral syndromes and social selection

虽然很久以前就很清楚，有些人比其他人更冒险或更具侵略性，但最近的研究揭示了整个动物王国在大胆和侵略性方面的平行，物种内差异。该项目的广泛目标将是增加我们对行为的个体差异如何与个人的生态和社会环境相关的理解，以及个人的行为和环境如何相互作用以确定个人的健康（生存和生殖成功）。这些知识将阐明个人的生态和社会相互作用如何有助于种群水平的生态和进化过程。更具体地说，这个项目将研究：1）在应对不断变化的危险程度或不同的社会条件（例如，群体大小或性别比例）; 2）平均行为和行为灵活性两者的个体差异如何影响适应性结果，如在不同风险和社会环境中的生存和繁殖成功;以及，3）情境选择的个体差异（即，偏好不同的生态或社会条件）以及大胆或侵略性，情境选择和健身结果之间的关系。 这些目标将通过主要研究者在过去25年中收集的大型实验数据集的新分析（使用复杂的分层混合建模方法）和相关文献（包括人类在内的所有动物）的综合，以及沿着新概念框架的发展来组织知识和产生新的预测。 该项目将培训几名青年科学家，并在科学期刊上发表文章和制作教学工具。

While it has long been clear that some humans take more risks or are more aggressive than others, recent work has revealed parallel, within-species differences in boldness and aggressiveness throughout the animal kingdom. The broad goal of the project will be to increase our understanding of how individual differences in behavior relate to the individual's ecological and social environment, and how the individual's behavior and its environment interact to determine the individual's fitness (survival and reproductive success). Such knowledge will clarify how individual ecological and social interactions contribute to population level ecological and evolutionary processes. More specifically, this project will examine: 1) patterns in individual differences in behavioral flexibility in response to changing levels of danger or varying social conditions (e.g., group size, or sex ratio); 2) how individual differences in both average behavior and behavioral flexibility influence fitness outcomes like survival and reproductive success in different risk and social environments; and, 3) individual differences in situation choice (i.e., preference for different ecological or social conditions) and relationships between boldness or aggressiveness, situation choice, and fitness outcomes. These goals will be achieved by a combination of new analyses of large experimental data sets collected by the principal investigator over the last 25 years (using sophisticated hierarchical mixed modeling methods), and syntheses of relevant literature (on all animals, including humans) along with the development of novel conceptual frameworks for organizing knowledge and generating new predictions. The project will train several young scientists and produce both publications in scientific journals and teaching tools.