science market
The ecology of personality: current status and perspectives
Interest in research on the ecology of personality has rapidly increased over the last 15 years. We now know that consistent inter-individual differences in behavioural traits, such as activity, boldness, exploration, aggressiveness, and sociality, and correlations between these traits, are commonly observed in animal populations. Furthermore, recent evidence suggests the existence of complex links between personality traits and fitness, and the possibility that personality differences are an element of life-history strategies. We now need the development of a robust theoretical and empirical framework for future research on these topics.
In this symposium we hope to attract a panel of empiricists and theorists to both evaluate the situation on the most recent research and to simulate open discussions on the perspectives in fundamental and applied research in this domain. We encourage authors to apply for papers on: 1) the link between personality differences and life history strategies; 2) natural selection on personality traits; 3) the ecological conditions favouring the presence of correlations between personality traits ("behavioural syndromes"); and 4) the potential applications of personality studies to conservation and invasive biology.
Organized by Denis Réale (1), Niels J. Dingemanse (2) and Jonathan Wright (3)
- (1) Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Ecology and GRECA
- Département des sciences biologiques,
- Université du Québec À Montréal,
- CP-8888 succursale centre-ville,
- Montréal, Qc, Canada, H3C 3P8.
- reale.denis@uqam.ca
- (2) Animal Ecology Group & Department of Behavioural Biology
- University of Groningen,
- PO Box 14,
- NL-9750 AA Haren, The Netherlands
- n.j.dingemanse@rug.nl
- (3) Institute of Biology,
- Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU),
- 7491 Trondheim, Norway
- jonathan.wright@bio.ntnu.no
