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Personality, foraging behavior and specialization: integrating behavioral and food web ecology at the individual level

Oecologia volume 182, pages 55–69 (2016)Cite this article

Abstract

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 that individuals can modify behavioral traits and diet across ecological contexts to maximize fitness. Yet, research conducted over the past 15 years supports an alternative view; fundamental behavioral traits (e.g., activity level, exploration, sociability, boldness and aggressiveness) and diet often vary among individuals and this variation persists over time and across contexts. This phenomenon has been termed animal personality with regard to behavioral traits and individual specialization with regard to diet. While these aspects of individual-level phenotypic variation have been thus far studied in isolation, emerging evidence suggests that personality and individual specialization may covary, or even be causally related. Building on this work, we present the overarching hypothesis that animal personality can drive specialization through individual differences in various aspects of consumer foraging behavior. Specifically, we suggest pathways by which consumer personality traits influence foraging activity, risk-dependent foraging, roles in social foraging groups, spatial aspects of foraging and physiological drivers of foraging, which in turn can lead to consistent individual differences in food resource use. These pathways provide a basis for generating testable hypotheses directly linking animal personality to ecological dynamics, a major goal in contemporary behavioral ecology.

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the Eco-DAS (Ecological Dissertations in the Aquatic Sciences) program (supported by National Science Foundation award OCE-1356192 and the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography) for funding and fostering this collaboration. Additional support was provided by an Arnold O. Beckman Postdoctoral Fellowship to B. J. Toscano. We also thank P. F. Kemp, L. J. Baker and the Rudolf and Miller laboratories at Rice University for helpful feedback that improved the manuscript.

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Affiliations

  1. BioSciences, Rice University, Houston, TX, 77005, USA

    Benjamin J. Toscano

  2. Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

    Natasha J. Gownaris

  3. Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, Belfair, WA, 98528, USA

    Sarah M. Heerhartz

  4. Department of Zoology and Entomology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa

    Cristián J. Monaco

Authors
  1. Benjamin J. Toscano
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  2. Natasha J. Gownaris
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  3. Sarah M. Heerhartz
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  4. Cristián J. Monaco
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benjamin J. Toscano.

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Communicated by Craig A. Layman.

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Toscano, B.J., Gownaris, N.J., Heerhartz, S.M. et al. Personality, foraging behavior and specialization: integrating behavioral and food web ecology at the individual level. Oecologia 182, 55–69 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-016-3648-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-016-3648-8

Keywords

  • Behavioral type/syndrome
  • Diet breadth
  • Food resource use
  • Predator–prey
  • Temperament