Towards an evolutionary ecology of individual differences

在过去的十年里，在行为生态学中，人们对个体之间一致的行为差异，也称为个性差异，越来越感兴趣。这种兴趣的核心是同一物种的个体行为不同的生态和进化原因。对人格的兴趣与一些进化假说的理论活动的复兴有关：选择的时空差异和个体生态位专业化的进化、频率依赖的选择、间接遗传效应和个体社会生态位专业化的进化，都被认为是维持人格差异的替代解释。与此同时，最近关于人格差异进化的研究将研究范围扩大到其他特征，如生活史或新陈代谢。行为差异现在被认为是一整套生活史/新陈代谢策略的一部分，这可能为维持野外行为差异提供适应性解释。在围绕动物人格问题的这一系列活动中，我受益于我在该领域的先锋地位，提出了一个研究计划，调查一些维持人格差异的进化假说。 在接下来的五年里，我和我的学生将使用我在过去几年中参与的独特的长期实地研究的数据来探索这些不同的假设。我的计划将由三个主要的短期研究目标组成：1)测试生活节奏综合征假说(人格是生活史策略的一个方面，行为变化与生活史权衡的存在密切相关的假说)。2)检验时空环境变化产生选择压力从而驱动个性差异的假设；3)调查社会生态位专业化和个性差异之间的联系。我的计划将提供一套独特的研究，帮助发展个体差异的进化生态。

Over the last decade in behavioural ecology there has been an increasing interest in consistent behavioural differences among individuals, also called personality differences. At the centre of this interest are the ecological and evolutionary reasons that individuals of the same species differ in their behaviour. The interest in personality is associated with a resurgence of theoretical activity on some evolutionary hypotheses: spatial and temporal variation in selection and the evolution of individual niche specialisation, frequency-dependent selection, indirect genetic effects, and the evolution of individual social niche specialisation, have all been proposed as alternative explanations to the maintenance of personality differences. At the same time, recent work on the evolution of personality differences has broadened the range of investigation to other traits such as life history or metabolism. Behavioural differences are now assumed to be part of a package of life history/metabolic strategies, which may provide adaptive explanations for the maintenance of behavioural variation in the wild. In this burst of activity around the questions on animal personality, I profit from my pioneering position in the field to propose a research program investigating some of the evolutionary hypotheses for the maintenance of personality differences. Over the next five years, my students and I will use data from unique long-term field studies I have been involved in over the last few years to explore theses different hypotheses. My program will be composed of three main short-term research objectives: 1) Testing the pace-of-life syndrome hypothesis (the hypothesis that personality is a facet of life history strategies, and behavioural variation is tightly linked to the existence of life history trade-offs). 2) Testing the hypothesis that spatial-temporal environmental variations create selection pressures that drive personality differences; and 3) Investigating the link between social niche specialisation and personality differences. My program will provide a unique set of studies that will help to develop an evolutionary ecology of individual differences.