New perspectives in behavioural development: Adaptive shaping of behaviour over a lifetime?

Abstract

The last years have seen an explosion of publications on consistent, i.e. repeatable, behavioural differences among individuals and their potential adaptive significance and evolutionary origin. Stable, repeatable traits imply reduced plasticity and this is particularly interesting in the case of behaviour, which is the most flexible trait of an animal in its interaction with the biotic and abiotic environment. While the importance of consistent individual differences has been widely acknowledged, the lifetime development of these differences and their potentially adaptive or maladaptive consequences for individuals only recently came into the focus of research [1,2]. As a result, widespread evidence for the existence of changes in behaviour and behavioural plasticity over the lifetime of individuals begins to accumulate [3]. This has raised novel questions concerning the overwhelming importance of ontogenetic and trans-generational influences on the development and fitness of behavioural phenotypes and the mechanisms influencing changes during an individual's lifetime.