Behavioral syndromes: an ecological and evolutionary overview

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Abstract

Recent studies suggest that populations and species often exhibit behavioral syndromes; that is, suites of correlated behaviors across situations. An example is an aggression syndrome where some individuals are more aggressive, whereas others are less aggressive across a range of situations and contexts. The existence of behavioral syndromes focuses the attention of behavioral ecologists on limited (less than optimal) behavioral plasticity and behavioral carryovers across situations, rather than on optimal plasticity in each isolated situation. Behavioral syndromes can explain behaviors that appear strikingly non-adaptive in an isolated context (e.g. inappropriately high activity when predators are present, or excessive sexual cannibalism). Behavioral syndromes can also help to explain the maintenance of individual variation in behavioral types, a phenomenon that is ubiquitous, but often ignored. Recent studies suggest that the behavioral type of an individual, population or species can have important ecological and evolutionary implications, including major effects on species distributions, on the relative tendencies of species to be invasive or to respond well to environmental change, and on speciation rates. Although most studies of behavioral syndromes to date have focused on a few organisms, mainly in the laboratory, further work on other species, particularly in the field, should yield numerous new insights.

Section snippets

Why are behavioral syndromes important?

Consider an aggression syndrome where some individuals are more aggressive than others across a range of situations. All individuals shift their aggression levels up or down depending on the situation; however, some remain consistently more aggressive than others (i.e. their rank order is maintained). More aggressive individuals should do well in competitive situations where aggression is favored; however, if the general aggressive tendency carries over into other situations, aggressive

Types of ecologically important behavioral syndromes

Tradeoffs play a crucial role in explaining many ecological and evolutionary patterns. Therefore, behavioral syndromes should be particularly important when they generate tradeoffs or conflicts. In predator–prey ecology, a fundamental tradeoff centers on activity. For prey, the standard view about this tradeoff involves a within-situation time budget conflict [9] where, when predators are present, increased prey activity results in higher prey feeding rates, but also higher predation risk 10, 11

How broad and stable are behavioral syndromes?

All else being equal, behavioral syndromes should be particularly important if they extend across a broad range of contexts (or what psychologists call ‘domains’). For example, a broad syndrome might involve correlations among feeding, mating, contest, antipredator, parental care and dispersal behaviors. Alternatively, syndromes can be domain specific [21]; that is, behaviors might be correlated within one specific domain (e.g. within the mating domain, aggression towards males and females

Evolution and behavioral syndromes

Explicit evolutionary theory has not yet been developed for behavioral syndromes; however, some insights can be drawn from parallels with existing, related evolutionary theory (Box 1, Box 2). Two key interrelated aspects of behavioral syndromes are limited behavioral plasticity and behavioral correlations across situations. From an unconstrained optimality view, animals should show optimal plasticity, and selection should decouple correlations that cause conflicts. Yet these constraints appear

Ecological Implications

Behavioral syndromes might often have important ecological impacts because: (i) behavioral correlations and limited plasticity can generate tradeoffs that limit the ability of a species to cope with limiting environmental factors; and (ii) behavioral correlations across contexts (e.g. between reproductive, predator–prey and dispersal behaviors) can couple birth, death and dispersal processes in ways that are not usually included in ecological analyses.

For example, activity syndromes that

Concluding remarks

Recent work suggests that behavioral syndromes (suites of correlated behaviors across contexts) are important because they can: (i) limit behavioral plasticity; (ii) explain non-optimal behavior; and (iii) help to maintain individual variation in behavior. In turn, these behavioral effects can have major impacts on individual fitness, species distributions, species responses to environmental change, and speciation rates. We are, however, at an early stage in quantifying and understanding the

Acknowledgements

This paper emerged from a graduate course and workshop at the University of California at Davis sponsored by the UCD Center for Animal Behavior and the Animal Behavior Graduate Group. Numerous participants contributed valuable ideas and insights. The work was supported by grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, in particular, NSF IBN-0222063 awarded to A.S., and by an Animal Behavior Society student grant.

Glossary

Glossary

Behavioral correlation across situations:
between-individual consistency across situations that can either involve the same context but in different situations (e.g. feeding activity in the presence versus absence of predators), or different contexts in different situations (e.g. aggression towards conspecifics in the absence of predators versus feeding activity in the presence of predators).
Behavioral syndrome:
a suite of correlated behaviors reflecting between-individual consistency in behavior

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