Individual behaviour: behavioural ecology meets quantitative genetics

Abstract

Abstract Emerging interest on the part of behavioural ecologists into the causes and consequences of individually repeatable behaviour substantially crosses over methodology and theory well developed in the field of quantitative genetics. Unfortunately, how behavioural ecological concepts translate to quantitative genetic parameters has been under-recognized by researchers in both groups. In this chapter, this overlap is discussed, behavioural ecology terms like ‘animal personality’ and ‘behavioural syndrome’ explicitly defined as quantitative genetic parameters, and adaptive explanations for between-individual behavioural variation are also examined. In addition, this chapter talks about what is known about patterns of behavioural heritabilities, additive genetic correlations between behaviours, and how behavioural correlations might constrain evolutionary responses. Finally, this chapter describes ways in which theory and empirical research in behavioural ecology might inform attempts among the broader quantitative genetics community to understand how and why variation is distributed.