Plasticity and Personality

Abstract

One common misconception is that the presence of consistent individual differences in behavior (animal personality) necessarily implies that individuals are not behaviorally plastic. However, under changing environmental conditions, individuals can adjust their behavior while remaining consistently different from each other. This chapter discusses how animal personality and behavioral plasticity can be studied together and provides an overview of the statistical methods used to achieve this aim. It highlights a few empirical examples of correlations between personality and plasticity and briefly discusses adaptive explanations for such correlations. The chapter also discusses the ecological and evolutionary consequences of personality-related differences in plasticity, and reviews the existing evidence for environmental versus genetic underpinnings for this phenomenon. Finally, it concludes with a discussion of experimental designs for the study of personality and plasticity and identifies some promising avenues for future research.