Mini-symposium: The eco-evo-devo of stickleback personalities

12:00 Pim Edelaar (University Pablo de Olavide): Adaptive evolution by selective production of heritable variation

Abstract: Performance-based habitat choice is increasingly appreciated as an alternative driver of adaptive evolution. Somewhat paradoxically, standard evolutionary theory cannot assimilate this in a straightforward manner. I will discuss how a reinterpretation of the classical requirements for adaptive evolution (variation, selection, inheritance) can resolve this undesirable situation by uncovering a second driver of adaptive evolution: the selective production of heritable variation. Performance-based habitat choice turns out to be a special case of this very general second driver, which also may involve phenomena like cultural evolution, epigenetics, environmental inheritance, etc. This second driver bridges the historical divide between developmental biology and evolutionary biology, and provides a return of the organism into evolutionary biology.

12:30 Simon Verhulst (GELIFES): Early life adversity affects social network position independent of ‘personality’

Abstract: Individual differences in behaviour are well established, but the causes of this variation are poorly understood. We studied long term effects of nutritional stress during early development on performance in multiple behavioural assays in captive zebra finches. Early life adversity did not significantly affect behaviour in any of the tests, despite a substantial sample size and test repeatability. Quantitative genetic effects on behaviour were small, and we speculate that individual variation in behaviour was largely shaped during adolescence when individuals were maintained in flocks. Subsequent to the behavioural tests, we quantified individual performance in social networks, and found that individuals that experienced nutritional stress during early development attained more peripheral positions in social networks, which in other studies predicted low fitness prospects. We will discuss the implications of our findings for the study of individual differences in behaviour

13:00 Break

13:10 Jakob Gismann (GELIFES): The eco-evo-devo of stickleback personalities