Week 15. - Dec. 9th
Animal Personalities (plus parasites maybe)

(When Tuesday is a Thursday)
IP Abstracts due on the courses server by 5:00 pm

MOODLE: Post and comment on papers that discuss "Animal Personalities" as described by Andy Sih. "suites of correlated behaviors across situations." Choose both mechanistic and ecological papers. I know that there are even a few reports that have used genomic approaches.

dugatkinCall it "personality", call it "behavioral syndrome", it is the quality of individual variation with regard to behavior. But more than simply variation, these terms describe an complex behavioral phenotype that transcends specific behaviors.

Why is the phenomenon of animal personality one of the most intriguing challenges to the "adaptationist programme"? In what way is it counter intuitive that variation should be selected for? What is the evidence for and against the adaptive value of animal personalities (i.e. behavioral syndromes).

READ:
Sih, A., Bell, A., Johnson, J.C. (2004) Behavioral syndromess: an ecological and evolutionary overview. TREE 19:372-378.

Wolf, M., van Doorn, G.S., Leimar, O. & Weissing F.J. (2007) Life-history trade-offs favour the evolution of animal personalities. Nature 447:581:585.
as you read this one try to list the constraints, assumptions and parameters that were used for the simple asexual model (figures 1-3) and pay attentio to how the model was changed in order to incorporate of quantitative genetics?

EXTRA:
The topic of animal personality generate a lot of discussion among researchers today. In part I think this is because of the use of the work "personality". What do you think of using this term to describe animal behaviors?

Sih et al., 2004 generated some debate:
Neff, B.D., Sherman, P.W. (2004) Behavioral syndromes versus darwinian algorithms. TREE 19:621-622.


That debate promted rebuttle.
Sih, A., Bell, A., Johnson, J.C. (2004) Reply to Neff and Sherman. Behavioral syndromes versus darwinian algorithms TREE 19:622-623.


Even Wolf et al., 2007, couldn't go without comment.
Bell (2007) Animal Personalities. Nature 447:539:540.

Dec. ??th
Third Annual Reed Animal Behavior Poster Session

(Date to be determined by students) either Tuesday afternoon Dec. 9th or during finals week.