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Full-Text Articles in Behavior and Ethology
Animal Personality As A Cause And Consequence Of Contest Behaviour, Mark Briffa, Lynne U. Sneddon, Alistair J. Wilson
Animal Personality As A Cause And Consequence Of Contest Behaviour, Mark Briffa, Lynne U. Sneddon, Alistair J. Wilson
Lynne Sneddon, PhD
We review the evidence for a link between consistent among-individual variation in behaviour (animal personality) and the ability to win contests over limited resources. Explorative and bold behaviours often covary with contest behaviour and outcome, although there is evidence that the structure of these ‘behavioural syndromes’ can change across situations. Aggression itself is typically repeatable, but also subject to high within-individual variation as a consequence of plastic responses to previous fight outcomes and opponent traits. Common proximate mechanisms (gene expression, endocrine control and metabolic rates) may underpin variation in both contest behaviour and general personality traits. Given the theoretical links …
Striped Plateau Lizards (Sceloporus Virgatus) Do Not Exhibit Behavioral Syndromes In Exploratory And Anti-Predator Contexts, Alisa Wallace
Striped Plateau Lizards (Sceloporus Virgatus) Do Not Exhibit Behavioral Syndromes In Exploratory And Anti-Predator Contexts, Alisa Wallace
Summer Research
Some animals exhibit certain behavior types consistently between contexts and/or across time. This phenomenon is known as a behavioral syndrome, or personality. Behavioral syndromes have important evolutionary implications because there are times when consistently behaving in a particular way results in fitness constraints, and we are still trying to understand why some animals have them but others don’t. For my work, I sought to determine whether the striped plateau lizard (Sceloporus virgatus), a small lizard native to the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona, demonstrated behavioral syndromes. I collected 14 male lizards and observed their responses to three behavioral assays: …
The Causes And Consequences Of Individual Variation In Parental Care Behavior, Daniel P. Wetzel
The Causes And Consequences Of Individual Variation In Parental Care Behavior, Daniel P. Wetzel
Theses and Dissertations--Biology
Behavioral traits can be remarkably flexible depending on the conditions in which they are expressed, yet, in spite of this flexibility, persistent differences between individuals appear to limit the potential expression of behaviors. For example, despite evidence that parents provide variable amounts of parental care in response to changing environmental conditions, they also differ in the overall level of care they provide. I used a behavioral reaction norm approach to study individual variation in parental care behavior in free-living house sparrows (Passer domesticus). I investigated the nature of this variation by studying the relationship between different forms of …