Integrating development into models of behavioral individuality

• Applicant: Sean Ehlman, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Sensory and Behavioural Biology ; Bioinformatics and Theoretical Biology
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 536703956

Integrating development into models of behavioral individuality. Across the animal kingdom, behavioral individuality (that is, consistent individual variation in behavior) is ubiquitous. For the last two decades, researchers have documented not only the existence of this individuality, but also its important consequences for ecology and evolution. Despite the widely acknowledged importance of consistent behavioral variation, however, we still lack a fundamental understanding of how behavioral individuality emerges and is maintained during biological development. In fact, development likely plays a key role in mediating the evolution of both the nature and degree of behavioral variation, and initial efforts to incorporate developmental processes into theoretical models that are otherwise devoid of these processes have generated predictions that are more in line with empirically observed phenomena. Thus, more research integrating developmental patterns and processes into the study of behavioral individuality is of great need and promise in this this key research area. Up to now, research on behavioral individuality has benefitted from a vigorous synergy between theory and empirical tests, producing many key insights for the field (albeit mostly ignoring development). Building on this tradition, the proposed project will advance theory on the development of behavioral individuality by constructing a new generation of developmentally explicit and readily testable mathematical and computational models. Working closely with a team of top theoreticians as well as leading empirical experts in the study of behavioral development, this project will form the basis for novel testable insights and continuing theoretical-empirical synergy moving forward. Indeed, mathematical models are an essential and powerful approach to generating basic testable insights; since patterns of behavioral individuality unfold gradually over development in complex and dynamic ways, such models provide an indispensable method for honing predictions that enhance the efficiency and potential explanatory impact of future empirical tests. My models will integrate features of development into four factors widely considered to be key drivers of individuality: environmental heterogeneity, biological tradeoffs, state-behavior feedbacks, and social interactions. These four key factors will thus also serve as the foundation for four specific objectives of my project: (1) Examine how both environmental variability and predictability influence patterns of individuality through development. (2) Investigate the role of key developmental trade-offs in generating patterns of behavioral individuality. (3) Explore how dynamic feedback loops between behavior and internal state affect the development of individuality. (4) Construct developmental, multi-shot game theory models to study the role of social dynamics on shaping individuality through development.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants