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      You eat what you are: personality‐dependent filial cannibalism in a fish with paternal care

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          Abstract

          Many animal parents invest heavily to ensure offspring survival, yet some eventually consume some or all of their very own young. This so‐called filial cannibalism is known from a wide range of taxa, but its adaptive benefit remains largely unclear. The extent to which parents cannibalize their broods varies substantially not only between species, but also between individuals, indicating that intrinsic behavioral differences, or animal personalities, might constitute a relevant proximate trigger for filial cannibalism. Using a marine fish with extensive paternal care, the common goby ( Pomatoschistus microps) , we investigated the influence of animal personality on filial cannibalism by assessing (1) behavioral consistency across a breeding and a nonbreeding context; (2) correlations between different breeding (egg fanning; filial cannibalism) and nonbreeding (activity) behaviors, and, in a separate experiment; (3) whether previously established personality scores affect filial cannibalism levels. We found consistent individual differences in activity across contexts. Partial filial cannibalism was independent of egg fanning but correlated strongly with activity, where active males cannibalized more eggs than less active males. This pattern was strong initially but vanished as the breeding season progressed. The incidence of whole clutch filial cannibalism increased with activity and clutch size. Our findings indicate that filial cannibalism cannot generally be adjusted independently of male personality and is thus phenotypically less plastic than typically assumed. The present work stresses the multidimensional interaction between animal personality, individual plasticity and the environment in shaping filial cannibalism.

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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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            Ecological implications of behavioural syndromes.

            Interspecific trait variation has long served as a conceptual foundation for our understanding of ecological patterns and dynamics. In particular, ecologists recognise the important role that animal behaviour plays in shaping ecological processes. An emerging area of interest in animal behaviour, the study of behavioural syndromes (animal personalities) considers how limited behavioural plasticity, as well as behavioural correlations affects an individual's fitness in diverse ecological contexts. In this article we explore how insights from the concept and study of behavioural syndromes provide fresh understanding of major issues in population ecology. We identify several general mechanisms for how population ecology phenomena can be influenced by a species or population's average behavioural type, by within-species variation in behavioural type, or by behavioural correlations across time or across ecological contexts. We note, in particular, the importance of behavioural type-dependent dispersal in spatial ecology. We then review recent literature and provide new syntheses for how these general mechanisms produce novel insights on five major issues in population ecology: (1) limits to species' distribution and abundance; (2) species interactions; (3) population dynamics; (4) relative responses to human-induced rapid environmental change; and (5) ecological invasions. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/CNRS.
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              Behavioural syndromes differ predictably between 12 populations of three-spined stickleback.

              Animals often differ in suites of correlated behaviours, comparable with how humans differ in personality. Constraints on the architecture of behaviour have been invoked to explain why such 'behavioural syndromes' exist. From an adaptationist viewpoint, however, behavioural syndromes should evolve only in those populations where natural selection has favoured such trait covariance, and they should therefore exist only in particular types of population. A comparative approach was used to examine this prediction of the adaptive hypothesis. We measured behavioural correlations in 12 different populations of three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) and assessed whether they indeed varied consistently according to the selective environment, where population was unit of analysis. For a sample of fry from each population, we measured five different behaviours within the categories of (i) aggression (towards conspecifics); (ii) general activity; and (iii) exploration-avoidance (of novel foods, novel environments and altered environments). We show that behavioural syndromes are not always the same in different types of stickleback population: the often-documented syndrome between aggressiveness, activity and exploratory behaviour existed only in large ponds where piscivorous predators were present. In small ponds where predators were absent, these behaviours were not (or only weakly) associated. Our findings imply that population variation in behavioural syndromes does not result from stochastic evolutionary processes, but may result instead from adaptive evolution of behaviour favouring what should prove to be optimal trait combinations.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Ecol Evol
                Ecol Evol
                10.1002/(ISSN)2045-7758
                ECE3
                Ecology and Evolution
                John Wiley and Sons Inc. (Hoboken )
                2045-7758
                29 January 2016
                March 2016
                : 6
                : 5 ( doiID: 10.1002/ece3.2016.6.issue-5 )
                : 1340-1352
                Affiliations
                [ 1 ] Animal Evolutionary Ecology groupUniversity of Tübingen 72076 TübingenGermany
                [ 2 ] Environmental and Marine BiologyÅbo Akademi University 20520 TurkuFinland
                Author notes
                [*] [* ] Correspondence

                Martin Vallon and Katja U. Heubel, Animal Evolutionary Ecology group, University of Tübingen, 72076 Tübingen, Germany.

                Tel: +49 7071 29 74649;

                Fax: +49 7071 29 5634;

                E‐mails: martin.vallon@ 123456uni-tuebingen.de and katja.heubel@ 123456uni-tuebingen.de

                Article
                ECE31966
                10.1002/ece3.1966
                4775538
                27087921
                5c311ab7-f039-4dd4-9637-03f154d865c1
                © 2016 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

                This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 05 August 2015
                : 21 December 2015
                : 23 December 2015
                Page count
                Pages: 13
                Funding
                Funded by: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
                Award ID: SP 1375/1‐1
                Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation
                Categories
                Original Research
                Original Research
                Custom metadata
                2.0
                ece31966
                March 2016
                Converter:WILEY_ML3GV2_TO_NLMPMC version:4.7.6 mode:remove_FC converted:02.03.2016

                Evolutionary Biology
                behavioral syndrome,individual variation,infanticide,parental care,spillover effect

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