The role of social environments in personality-related settlement decisions in a wild passerine bird

可重复的个体行为差异(通常被称为“动物个性”)在动物物种中普遍存在。近年来，越来越多的证据表明，个体并不是随机分散的，而是聚集在与自己个性最匹配的栖息地。这种行为表型的非随机分类可能会对个人的健康状况以及整个群体的社会动态产生影响。虽然动物个性、行为表型分布和社会环境之间相互作用的理论概念已经发展出来，但它们之间的关系在自然种群中仍然知之甚少。在这里，我提出了一个项目，旨在调查野生种群中的社会结构如何驱动行为表型的分类(反之亦然)，以及这种互动产生的健康后果是什么。我将使用大山雀(Parus Main)--动物人格研究中的一个关键物种--作为一个研究系统。拟议的项目由两个紧密相连的研究部分组成。首先，我将利用一项正在进行的对12个大山雀巢箱种群的长期研究，自2009年以来，已经记录了这些大山雀的个性特征及其分布。具体地说，我将研究当地社会环境的构成如何影响不同行为表型的定居和适应。其次，我将另外设立六个试验性的巢箱小区，在三年的时间里对社会环境进行有针对性的操纵。特别是，我将使用冬季食物补充来改变繁殖密度，并清除特定的具有已知行为表型(例如，攻击性与非攻击性)的领地雄性。这些操作将让我测试，个人是否积极地在与自己个性相匹配的社会社区中定居，或者定居是否是一个随机的过程。此外，年内和年间重复的行为测量将揭示个别鸟类是否会随着其社会环境的变化而调整它们的行为(即个体内的变化)。总体而言，拟议的项目将促进我们对选择如何作用于行为特征的理解，并为自然种群中群落空间结构的生态和进化动态提供新的见解。

Repeatable individual differences in behaviour (often referred to as “animal personality”) are ubiquitous among animal species. In recent years, evidence has accumulated that individuals do not disperse randomly, but aggregate in habitats that best match their own personalities. Such non-random assortment of behavioural phenotypes may have implications for an individual’s fitness, as well as the social dynamics of the whole population. While theoretical concepts of the interplay between animal personality, the distribution of behavioural phenotypes, and the social environment have been developed, their relationship remains poorly understood in natural populations. Here, I propose a project that aims to investigate how social structures within wild populations drive the assortment of behavioural phenotypes (and vice versa) and what fitness consequences result from such interactions. I will use the great tit (Parus major) – a key species in animal personality research – as a study system. The proposed project consists of two tightly connected research parts. First, I will make use of an ongoing long-term study of 12 nest box populations of great tits, for which personality traits and their distribution have been recorded since 2009. Specifically, I will examine how the composition of the local social environment affects the settlement and fitness of different behavioural phenotypes. Second, I will set up six additional experimental nest box plots to perform targeted manipulations of the social environment over a period of three years. In particular, I will use winter food supplementation to alter breeding densities, and remove specific territorial males of known behavioural phenotypes (e.g. aggressive vs. non-aggressive). These manipulations will allow me to test if individuals actively settle in social neighbourhoods, which match their own personalities, or whether settlement is a random process. In addition, repeated behavioural measurements within and across years will reveal if individual birds adjust their behaviour (i.e. within-individual changes) as their social neighbourhood changes. Overall, the proposed project will advance our understanding of how selection acts on behavioural traits and provide novel insights into the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of the spatial structuring of communities in natural populations.