Sih Andrew, Bell Alison, Johnson J Chadwick
Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2004 Jul;19(7):372-8. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2004.04.009.
Recent studies suggest that populations and species often exhibit behavioral syndromes; that is, suites of correlated behaviors across situations. An example is an aggression syndrome where some individuals are more aggressive, whereas others are less aggressive across a range of situations and contexts. The existence of behavioral syndromes focuses the attention of behavioral ecologists on limited (less than optimal) behavioral plasticity and behavioral carryovers across situations, rather than on optimal plasticity in each isolated situation. Behavioral syndromes can explain behaviors that appear strikingly non-adaptive in an isolated context (e.g. inappropriately high activity when predators are present, or excessive sexual cannibalism). Behavioral syndromes can also help to explain the maintenance of individual variation in behavioral types, a phenomenon that is ubiquitous, but often ignored. Recent studies suggest that the behavioral type of an individual, population or species can have important ecological and evolutionary implications, including major effects on species distributions, on the relative tendencies of species to be invasive or to respond well to environmental change, and on speciation rates. Although most studies of behavioral syndromes to date have focused on a few organisms, mainly in the laboratory, further work on other species, particularly in the field, should yield numerous new insights.
最近的研究表明，种群和物种常常表现出行为综合征；也就是说，在不同情境下存在一系列相互关联的行为。一个例子是攻击综合征，在一系列情境和背景中，一些个体更具攻击性，而另一些个体则攻击性较弱。行为综合征的存在使行为生态学家将注意力集中在有限的（低于最优水平的）行为可塑性以及跨情境的行为延续性上，而非每个孤立情境中的最优可塑性。行为综合征可以解释在孤立情境中看似明显不适应的行为（例如，当有捕食者时活动过高或过度性食同类）。行为综合征也有助于解释行为类型中个体差异的维持，这是一种普遍存在但常常被忽视的现象。最近的研究表明，个体、种群或物种的行为类型可能具有重要的生态和进化意义，包括对物种分布、物种入侵或应对环境变化的相对倾向以及物种形成速率产生重大影响。尽管迄今为止大多数关于行为综合征的研究主要集中在少数生物上，且大多在实验室进行，但对其他物种，尤其是在野外的进一步研究，应该会产生许多新的见解。
