Behavioral traits and diet were traditionally thought to be highly plastic within individuals.
This view was espoused in the widespread use of optimality models, which broadly predict …

There is increasing interest in understanding the processes that maintain phenotypic
variation in groups, populations, or communities. Recent studies have investigated how the …

Winner, 2020 ASCA Book Award, given by the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis A
groundbreaking argument for the political rights of animals In When Animals Speak, Eva …

Describing the factors that shape collective behaviour is central to our understanding of
animal societies. Countless studies have demonstrated an effect of group size in the …

While there are now a number of theoretical models predicting how consistent individual
differences in behaviour may be generated and maintained, so far, there are few empirical …

Behavioural ecologists often note that one or a few group members appear to shape the
collective behaviour of social groups differentially. Our understanding of these keystone …

Individual animals vary in their behaviors. This is true even when they share the same
genotype and were reared in the same environment. Clusters of covarying behaviors …

Collective personalities refer to temporally consistent behavioral differences between
distinct social groups. This phenomenon is a ubiquitous and key feature of social groups in …

Social animals are extraordinarily diverse and ecologically abundant. In understanding the
success of complex animal societies, task differentiation has been identified as a central …

Highlights•Most studies in community ecology neglect individual trait variation.•Personality
drives intensity and nature of sexual conflict and social organization.•Personality variation …