Defining behavioural syndromes and the role of 'syndrome deviation' in understanding their evolution

This commentary highlights multivariate tools that have been used by evolutionary biologists in the study of syndromes and their evolution and discusses the insights that these methods provide into evolutionary processes relative to the metric 'syndrome deviation' that has recently been pr...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioral ecology and sociobiology 2012-11, Vol.66 (11), p.1543-1548
Main Authors: Dingemanse, Niels J., Dochtermann, Ned A., Nakagawa, Shinichi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Animal Ecology
Animals
Behavioral Sciences
Biological evolution
Biomedical and Life Sciences
COMMENTARY
Ecological genetics
Evolution
Evolutionary biology
Genetic variation
Genotype & phenotype
Life Sciences
Personality traits
Phenotypes
Phenotypic correlation
Phenotypic traits
Population genetics
Zoology
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This commentary highlights multivariate tools that have been used by evolutionary biologists in the study of syndromes and their evolution and discusses the insights that these methods provide into evolutionary processes relative to the metric 'syndrome deviation' that has recently been proposed by Herczeg and Garamszegi (Behav Ecol Sociobiol 66:161—169, 2012). We clarify that non-zero phenotypic correlations arise from the joint influences of within- and between-individual correlations, whereas only non-zero between-individual correlations represent behavioural syndromes, and discuss how acknowledgement of this subtle difference between phenotypic and between-individual correlations affects the applicability of syndrome deviation for the study of behavioural syndromes.
ISSN:0340-5443
1432-0762
DOI:10.1007/s00265-012-1416-2