BT-LH Link · The consequences of the joint individual variation in size specific life histories and behavioural types
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2015-06-01 → 2017-05-31
- EU contribution
- €171,461
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
The consequences of the joint individual variation in size specific life histories and behavioural types
No individuals of a group of animals are identical. Individuals in a population differ among each other in a variety of characteristics. It is commonly known that individuals vary among each other for example in their growth rate, their size or age at which they reach maturity, the rate of this reproduction etc. Such life history traits determine the fitness of an individual and the variation in traits among individuals have recently been shown to also influence the dynamics of populations and communities and how they respond to change in the environments the individuals experience. Understanding the causes and consequences of individual trait variation is an important endeavor for ecology and evolutionary biology. Such an understanding is crucial for successful species conservation or for the sustainable management of animal populations for their recreational and economic benefits to human well being. It is increasingly accepted that animals not only differ in their life history traits but that they also differ substantially in the behaviours they display and that this behaviour is less flexible than previously assumed. Instead the differences in behaviours among individuals are often highly consistent over time and over situations, leading to the establishment of stable variation in behavioural traits among individuals of the same populations, so called behavioural types. It has been suggested that behavioural types may be coupled to individual life history traits and that behaviour and life history traits together influence individual fitness and population and communities. The overall objective of the action was to investigate the emergence of the hypothesised link between behavioural types and life history traits over the development of individuals from juveniles to adults, how the link is influenced by environmental conditions like food availability and to assess the consequences of the link for population dynamics and the management of natural resources. To this aim we used a variety of approaches, reaching from literature reviews and the development of a conceptual framework to manipulative experiments at various levels and over different time spans. We conclude that indeed the coupling between behavioural types and life history traits can affect the dynamics of animal populations and can also affect the management of exploited populations. We also found that more research is required to exactly understand when and how the behavioural type - life history link is important.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Individual variations in body size and in behavioural types within a population have, each separately and in isolation, been shown to strongly determine the dynamics and stability of populations and their responses to perturbations and environmental change. However, both aspects of individual trait variation are fundamentally joined by their influence on individual life history traits which ultimately determine population level phenomena through individual growth, maturation, reproduction and survival. Taking this interplay into account can be argued to affect and even reverse predictions of each stand-alone approach. For this reasons, the proposed research project will, using an experimental system with the model species Heterandria formosa that combines individual level and long term population level manipulations, investigate the consequences of and mechanisms behind body size specific, density dependent life history traits linked to behavioural types. Clear hypotheses about total population density, population size structure and dynamics in constant and stochastically variable food environments will help to separate the effects of different sources of individual trait variation and investigate their joint population level effects. After a time of onceptual theorizing, experimental data are now desperately needed to confirm, test and further develop novel ideas and concepts. By integrating two so far isolated approaches (advanced behavioural biology and state-of-the-art population theory) the project will thus contribute to the current paradigm shift in population ecology which is increasingly focusing on the consequences of individual trait variation, helping to formulate a more comprehensive and synthetic theory of populationbiology.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- FORSCHUNGSVERBUND BERLIN EV · BerlinCoordinatorGermany
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union