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      A guide for studying among-individual behavioral variation from movement data in the wild

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          Abstract

          Animal tracking and biologging devices record large amounts of data on individual movement behaviors in natural environments. In these data, movement ecologists often view unexplained variation around the mean as “noise” when studying patterns at the population level. In the field of behavioral ecology, however, focus has shifted from population means to the biological underpinnings of variation around means. Specifically, behavioral ecologists use repeated measures of individual behavior to partition behavioral variability into intrinsic among-individual variation and reversible behavioral plasticity and to quantify: a) individual variation in behavioral types (i.e. different average behavioral expression), b) individual variation in behavioral plasticity (i.e. different responsiveness of individuals to environmental gradients), c) individual variation in behavioral predictability (i.e. different residual within-individual variability of behavior around the mean), and d) correlations among these components and correlations in suites of behaviors, called ‘behavioral syndromes’. We here suggest that partitioning behavioral variability in animal movements will further the integration of movement ecology with other fields of behavioral ecology. We provide a literature review illustrating that individual differences in movement behaviors are insightful for wildlife and conservation studies and give recommendations regarding the data required for addressing such questions. In the accompanying R tutorial we provide a guide to the statistical approaches quantifying the different aspects of among-individual variation. We use movement data from 35 African elephants and show that elephants differ in a) their average behavior for three common movement behaviors, b) the rate at which they adjusted movement over a temporal gradient, and c) their behavioral predictability (ranging from more to less predictable individuals). Finally, two of the three movement behaviors were correlated into a behavioral syndrome (d), with farther moving individuals having shorter mean residence times. Though not explicitly tested here, individual differences in movement and predictability can affect an individual’s risk to be hunted or poached and could therefore open new avenues for conservation biologists to assess population viability. We hope that this review, tutorial, and worked example will encourage movement ecologists to examine the biology of individual variation in animal movements hidden behind the population mean.

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          Adaptive versus non-adaptive phenotypic plasticity and the potential for contemporary adaptation in new environments

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            Behavioural reaction norms: animal personality meets individual plasticity

            Recent studies in the field of behavioural ecology have revealed intriguing variation in behaviour within single populations. Increasing evidence suggests that individual animals differ in their average level of behaviour displayed across a range of contexts (animal 'personality'), and in their responsiveness to environmental variation (plasticity), and that these phenomena can be considered complementary aspects of the individual phenotype. How should this complex variation be studied? Here, we outline how central ideas in behavioural ecology and quantitative genetics can be combined within a single framework based on the concept of 'behavioural reaction norms'. This integrative approach facilitates analysis of phenomena usually studied separately in terms of personality and plasticity, thereby enhancing understanding of their adaptive nature. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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              Animal personalities: consequences for ecology and evolution.

              Personality differences are a widespread phenomenon throughout the animal kingdom. Past research has focused on the characterization of such differences and a quest for their proximate and ultimate causation. However, the consequences of these differences for ecology and evolution received much less attention. Here, we strive to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive inventory of the potential implications of personality differences, ranging from population growth and persistence to species interactions and community dynamics, and covering issues such as social evolution, the speed of evolution, evolvability, and speciation. The emerging picture strongly suggests that personality differences matter for ecological and evolutionary processes (and their interaction) and, thus, should be considered a key dimension of ecologically and evolutionarily relevant intraspecific variation. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                anne.hertel@senckenberg.de
                dingemanse@biologie.uni-muenchen.de
                thomas.mueller@senckenberg.de
                Journal
                Mov Ecol
                Mov Ecol
                Movement Ecology
                BioMed Central (London )
                2051-3933
                29 June 2020
                29 June 2020
                2020
                : 8
                : 30
                Affiliations
                [1 ]GRID grid.507705.0, Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F), ; Senckenberganlage 25, 60325 Frankfurt am Main, Germany
                [2 ]GRID grid.463530.7, ISNI 0000 0004 7417 509X, Department of Natural Sciences and Environmental Health, , University of South-Eastern Norway, ; 3800 Bø i Telemark, Norway
                [3 ]GRID grid.5252.0, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 973X, Behavioural Ecology, Department of Biology, , Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, ; Planegg-Martinsried, Germany
                [4 ]GRID grid.7839.5, ISNI 0000 0004 1936 9721, Department of Biological Sciences, , Goethe University Frankfurt, ; Max-von-Laue-Straße 9, 60438 Frankfurt (Main), Germany
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7952-8243
                Article
                216
                10.1186/s40462-020-00216-8
                7325061
                32612837
                1be2ca32-c671-45fc-baff-ae538f804098
                © The Author(s) 2020

                Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

                History
                : 25 March 2020
                : 15 June 2020
                Funding
                Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010665, H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions;
                Award ID: 793077
                Award Recipient :
                Funded by: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DE)
                Award ID: NI 1539/1-1
                Award ID: DI 1694/1-1
                Award Recipient :
                Categories
                Review
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2020

                animal personality,behavioral reaction norms,behavioral specialization,behavioral syndromes,behavioral type,biologging,predictability

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