"Animal personality" and "behavioural syndrome" are fashionable topics in behavioural ecology, but most related studies basically deal with the within-individual repeatability of some anthropomorphic characters (such as boldness or neophobia) and their correlations, which are already well established phenomena for other behavioural traits. However, these research topics do offer some new and interesting concepts for understanding the evolution of behaviours. For example, one of these focuses on behavioural configurations, which emphasise that behaviours cannot evolve independently form each other and even from physiology and life history. Furthermore, patterns of within-individual variations of behaviours may be useful when targeting questions about plastic adaptations to the unpredictable environment. Relying on a field data from the collared flycatcher (Ficedula albicollis, a migrant passerine bird from Central Europe) collected over 7 years, I will demonstrate how issues about behavioural configurations and behavioural consistency can be tackled in an empirical framework.

Ponente: László Zsolt Garamszegi. Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Estación Biológica de Doñana-CSIC.

Producción y edición: Mediateca MNCN-CSIC.

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