Behavioral syndromes

In behavioral ecology, a behavioral syndrome is a correlated suite of behavioral traits, often (but not always) measured across multiple contexts. The suite of traits that are correlated at the population or species level is considered the behavioral syndrome, while the phenotype of the behavioral syndrome an individual shows is their behavioral type. For example, a population may show a behavioral syndrome that includes a positive correlation between foraging behavior and mating behavior. An individual may be more or less aggressive than another individual within this behavioral syndrome, and this aggressive or passive phenotype is that individual's behavioral type.

For example, the lizards Eulamprus heatwolei show a behavioral syndrome with two behavioral types. There is a correlated relationship between how territorial an individual is, how likely they are to explore their environment, and what strategy they use to avoid predation. This behavioral syndrome has also been shown to influence the mating system of this species; territorial males are more likely to sire offspring with territorial females, and larger territorial males compete less with other males for mates. However, less territorial, or "floater", males and females produce consistently larger offspring than territorial parents or hybrids.

Behavioral syndrome is a term that originated in the psychology literature. It was originally used to describe human behavioral disorders, including nervous and stereotypical behaviors. These often included pacing, involuntary muscle twitches, and repetitive self-mutilation.

The term became less popular in the late 1970s and 80s. Through the 90s, it was infrequently used analogously for "personality" in some behavioral ecology literature, but it was still primarily used in psychology literature to describe inter-individual differences in behavior to model systems like rodents and primates.

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