Evolutionary Behavioural Ecology Perspectives on Personality in Non-Human Animals

Abstract

Behavioural ecologists have studied the ecological causes and evolutionary consequences of personality in non-human animals. They used two primary approaches to understand “animal personality” from an adaptive perspective. First, they have focused on applying the phenotypic selection approach developed by evolutionary biologists to understand how (genetic) variation can be maintained despite selection. Those include fluctuating selection in space or time, and correlational selection, which may explain how standing variation in personality persists under the assumption that personality “types” exist in the first place. A second approach has used the state-dependent behavior framework developed by behavioural ecologists to explain the ecological conditions under which selection favors the evolution of personality (rather than adaptations such as behavioural plasticity). Those include state-dependent personality models, and state-behaviour feedback models. Here, we review both approaches, and discuss experiments in wild rodents and birds designed to test either type of adaptive explanation to infer whether personality variation in animals indeed represents an evolutionary adaptation.