Defining behavioural syndromes and the role of 'syndrome deviation' in understanding their evolution

• Published in: Behavioral ecology and sociobiology Vol. 66; no. 11; pp. 1543 - 1548
• Main Authors: Dingemanse, Niels J., Dochtermann, Ned A., Nakagawa, Shinichi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer 01-11-2012; Springer-Verlag; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Animal behavior; Animal Ecology; Animals; Behavioral Sciences; Biological evolution; Biomedical and Life Sciences; COMMENTARY; Ecological genetics; Evolution; Evolutionary biology; Genetic variation; Genotype & phenotype; Life Sciences; Personality traits; Phenotypes; Phenotypic correlation; Phenotypic traits; Population genetics; Zoology; Quantitative genetics; Behavioural syndrome; Mixed-effect modelling; Animal personality; Correlational selection
• ISSN: 0340-5443; 1432-0762
• DOI: 10.1007/s00265-012-1416-2

This commentary highlights multivariate tools that have been used by evolutionary biologists in the study of syndromes and their evolution and discusses the insights that these methods provide into evolutionary processes relative to the metric 'syndrome deviation' that has recently been proposed by Herczeg and Garamszegi (Behav Ecol Sociobiol 66:161—169, 2012). We clarify that non-zero phenotypic correlations arise from the joint influences of within- and between-individual correlations, whereas only non-zero between-individual correlations represent behavioural syndromes, and discuss how acknowledgement of this subtle difference between phenotypic and between-individual correlations affects the applicability of syndrome deviation for the study of behavioural syndromes.