Behavioural Biology, University of Bielefeld, PO Box 10 01 31, 33501 Bielefeld, Germany.
Dev Psychobiol. 2011 Sep;53(6):505-9. doi: 10.1002/dev.20573.
Interest has been growing among behavioral biologists in individual differences in animal behavior of the kind that can be considered to reflect differences in personality. Once considered the exclusive domain of human psychology, biologists have found evidence for personality across a wide range of species, while behavioral ecologist and theoretical biologists recognize the likely evolutionary origins and contribution to fitness of such. However, until recently most work has concentrated on ultimate questions of fitness and thus on adult animals, with little attention given to proximate, developmental origins. This is now changing, as approaches to studying animal personality broaden and methodologies are developed enabling this to be studied across periods of near continuous and often rapid ontogenetic change. Debate continues, however, about the right methodologies to characterize the phenomenon and attempt to do so in a comparable manner across taxa that differ as widely in the expression of "personality" as insects and mammals. This makes it necessary to discuss this field in an interdisciplinary context among psychologists and biologists, and was the rational for a meeting on "The Emergence of Personality in Animals" held in May 2010 at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Forschung; ZiF), Bielefeld, Germany. The diversity of topics, viewpoints and organisms covered and the excitement created by the ensuing discussions is reflected in the resulting collection of papers forming this special issue.
行为生物学家越来越关注动物行为中的个体差异，这些差异可以被认为反映了个性的差异。个性曾被认为是人类心理学的专属领域，然而，生物学家已经在广泛的物种中发现了个性的证据，同时行为生态学家和理论生物学家也认识到这种个性可能具有进化起源和对适应性的贡献。然而，直到最近，大多数研究工作都集中在适应度的终极问题上，因此主要关注成年动物，而对个体发育起源的关注较少。随着研究动物个性的方法的扩展，以及能够在接近连续和经常快速的个体发育变化的时期进行研究的方法的发展，这种情况正在发生变化。然而，关于描述这种现象的正确方法以及试图在不同的分类群中以可比的方式进行描述的争论仍在继续，这些分类群在“个性”的表达上差异很大，从昆虫到哺乳动物。这使得有必要在心理学家和生物学家之间进行跨学科的讨论，这也是 2010 年 5 月在德国比勒费尔德的跨学科研究中心（Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Forschung；ZiF）举行的“动物个性的出现”会议的原因。本特辑中的论文集反映了会议涵盖的主题、观点和生物多样性，以及由此引发的讨论所产生的兴奋。
