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

作为人类，我们都表现出行为差异，赋予我们独特的性格或品质，即使我们的行为是灵活的。行为科学家现在正在积累证据，证明来自同一种群的野生动物在个性特征上也存在差异，例如一般活动，大胆和愿意在新情况下冒险。这些科学家正在确定负责个性差异的神经内分泌机制，并表明这些差异影响达尔文的健康。下一个挑战是评估性格差异对生态学和进化学科重要过程的影响，我们对幼溪红点鲑（也称为溪鳟）的研究探讨了性格差异如何影响动物种群分化为不同的亚群的趋势，这些亚群在吃什么和吃什么以及形态上都不同。这个过程称为资源多态性，通常发生在来自北方河流和湖泊的鱼类中。资源多态性是生物多样性的一种独特形式，可导致新物种的进化。我们的研究将测试个性如何与个体溪红点鲑的觅食、扩散和迁徙运动相关，从而确定它们在哪里吃什么。它还将研究个性差异的遗传和神经内分泌基础，以及这些个性差异如何与环境条件相互作用，以促进资源多态性。对野生动物个性的理解的进步要求科学家重新思考行为高度灵活的概念，在特定环境条件下存在单一的最佳行为方式，以及行为可以促进或抵制种群变化的方式。

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.