Behavioural decisions
• Response of individuals to current constraints
and/or conditions
– Internal and external factors
• Implies:
– Behaviour of animals is adapted through natural
selection
– Behaviour is flexible
– All behaviour has some associated cost and benefit
– Individuals should respond in a pattern that will
maximize benefits and/or minimize costs
• Traditional approaches could not fully
explain flexible behaviour patterns
– Use of ‘motivation’ did not fully explain why
we observe flexible behaviour patterns
– No link between ‘motivation’ and adaptive
value
• Hamilton and Maynard-Smith both argued
for the use of economic theory to explain
and predict flexible behaviour
– Cost/benefit analysis
– Theoretical link to adaptive value
Optimality models
• Based on the assumed (or calculated) costs
and benefits of a behaviour pattern
– Costs = both constraints and conditions
– Benefits = immediate or life time fitness
• Why use models?
– Formalize hypotheses
– Make testable predictions
• Why assume ‘optimality’?
• eg. Foraging of parental starlings
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Starling foraging
• Costs
– Search time (increased with distance)
– Foraging time
• Benefits
– Increased growth and survival of young
– Reduced energy expenditure
• Question: what is the optimum number
of food items to be collected given the
travel distance?
– How many bugs should female collect in order
to optimize energy gain for energy expended?
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Slide 10
Ideal Free Distribution
Slide 10
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Problems with modeling
• Models assume ‘optimal’ strategy
– Could be energy maximizers, risk minimizers or
making best of bad situation
• Assumes information is perfect and immediate
• Assumes we have accounted for all costs and/or
benefits
• Assumes we know what the individual is
optimizing
– Short vs. long term
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Phenotypic plasticity
• Differential expression of
phenotype within population
– G x E interaction
• Differential gene expression
• Differential fitness
• Constrained by reaction norm
• Any phenotypic trait may be plastic
– Can maintain variability within
population
• Developmental (regulatory genes)
• Behavioural (state dependent)
• Multi-level plasticity
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Reaction norm
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crushing filtering
Littoral à zooplankton
Benthic à gastropods
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Life history strategies
• Adaptations which directly influence age-specific
survival and fecundity
– Reproductive rate
– Age at maturity
– Current vs. future reproductive investment
– Mortality risk
• ANY COST-BENEFIT TRADE-OFF WHICH MAY
AFFECT AGE-SPECIFIC SURVIVAL AND FECUNDITY
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Life histories = adaptive trade-offs
• Individuals have ‘fixed’ amount of energy
– Dependent upon environment
– Dependent upon ‘phenotypic’ decisions
• Energy can be allocated to somatic or gonadal growth
• Energy allocation product of trade-offs
– Age at maturity
– Parity
– Fecundity
• Many species show high degree of phenotypic plasticity
• Species may exhibit multiple life history strategies depending
upon conditions and constraints
– Inter-population variability
– Intra-population variability
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Factors influence life history ‘choice’
• Resource availability
– Great tit egg laying date
– Cannibalism in spadefoot tadpoles
• Inter and intraspecific competition
– Bass and sunfish interactions
– Morphotypes in pumpkinseed and
bluegill sunfish
• Mating competition
– Sunfish mating strategy
• Predation pressure
– Tons of examples
• Abiotic factors (i.e. temperature)
– Invertebrate reproductive timing
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Male mating
strategies in
Trinidadian
guppy:
Effects of
predation
pressure
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Cichlid predator Hart’s rivulus predator
High mortality to High mortality to
large adults new hatch
Low cost of reproduction High cost of reproduction
(not sensitive to offspring size) (sensitive to offspring size)
Selection for many Selection for few
small offspring large offspring
Females reproduce earlier Females reproduce later
at smaller size at larger size
Increase investment in GI Increase investment in SI
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Variation within populations as well
Cannibalism in spadefoot tadpoles
Atlantic salmon: whether to go to sea or stay and reproduce early
Hermaphroditic fishes:
If large, be male
If small, be female
If dominant, be female
Hermit crabs: if shortage of large shells, reproduce early
Predator induced metamorphosis in amphibians
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Selection for alternative life history strategies
• Flexible life history strategies selected when:
– Variable ecological conditions
• breeding season to breeding season
– Populations with high genetic polymorphisms
– Variable reproductive value
• Multiple strategies can be maintained through:
– Gene flow and migration
• Mating strategies and guppies
– Frequency dependant selection
• Mixed ESS
• Is there one ‘best’ life history strategy?
• Implications for our optimality assumption?
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Personality types
• Consistent phenotypic variation within/between populations
– Behavioural tactics
• Risk prone (bold) vs. Risk averse (shy)
• Repeatable over time
– Repeatable over ‘contexts’
• (personality or syndromes)
• Selection favours tactics across ecological contexts
– Phenotypically plastic
• Induced by environmental uncertainty
– Is there a cost to personality?
• Pace of Life Syndromes
• Rs now vs. future
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Jones & G odin, 2010
B ell & Sih, 2007
W ilson & G odin, 2009
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C . B row n et al., 2005
C hapm an et al. 2010
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Dingemanse et al. 2007
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