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How to behave when marooned: the behavioural component of the island syndrome remains underexplored

Animals on islands typically depart from their mainland relatives in assorted aspects of their biology. Because they seem to occur in concert, and to some extent evolve convergently in disparate taxa, these changes are referred to as the ‘island syndrome’. While morphological, physiological and life...

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Autores principales: Gavriilidi, Ioanna, De Meester, Gilles, Van Damme, Raoul, Baeckens, Simon
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9039784/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35440235
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0030
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author Gavriilidi, Ioanna
De Meester, Gilles
Van Damme, Raoul
Baeckens, Simon
author_facet Gavriilidi, Ioanna
De Meester, Gilles
Van Damme, Raoul
Baeckens, Simon
author_sort Gavriilidi, Ioanna
collection PubMed
description Animals on islands typically depart from their mainland relatives in assorted aspects of their biology. Because they seem to occur in concert, and to some extent evolve convergently in disparate taxa, these changes are referred to as the ‘island syndrome’. While morphological, physiological and life-history components of the island syndrome have received considerable attention, much less is known about how insularity affects behaviour. In this paper, we argue why changes in personality traits and cognitive abilities can be expected to form part of the island syndrome. We provide an overview of studies that have compared personality traits and cognitive abilities between island and mainland populations, or among islands. Overall, the pickings are remarkably slim. There is evidence that animals on islands tend to be bolder than on the mainland, but effects on other personality traits go either way. The evidence for effects of insularity on cognitive abilities or style is highly circumstantial and very mixed. Finally, we consider the ecological drivers that may induce such changes, and the mechanisms through which they might occur. We conclude that our knowledge of the behavioural and cognitive responses to island environments remains limited, and we encourage behavioural biologists to make more use of these ‘natural laboratories for evolution’.
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spelling pubmed-90397842022-04-28 How to behave when marooned: the behavioural component of the island syndrome remains underexplored Gavriilidi, Ioanna De Meester, Gilles Van Damme, Raoul Baeckens, Simon Biol Lett Animal Behaviour Animals on islands typically depart from their mainland relatives in assorted aspects of their biology. Because they seem to occur in concert, and to some extent evolve convergently in disparate taxa, these changes are referred to as the ‘island syndrome’. While morphological, physiological and life-history components of the island syndrome have received considerable attention, much less is known about how insularity affects behaviour. In this paper, we argue why changes in personality traits and cognitive abilities can be expected to form part of the island syndrome. We provide an overview of studies that have compared personality traits and cognitive abilities between island and mainland populations, or among islands. Overall, the pickings are remarkably slim. There is evidence that animals on islands tend to be bolder than on the mainland, but effects on other personality traits go either way. The evidence for effects of insularity on cognitive abilities or style is highly circumstantial and very mixed. Finally, we consider the ecological drivers that may induce such changes, and the mechanisms through which they might occur. We conclude that our knowledge of the behavioural and cognitive responses to island environments remains limited, and we encourage behavioural biologists to make more use of these ‘natural laboratories for evolution’. The Royal Society 2022-04-20 /pmc/articles/PMC9039784/ /pubmed/35440235 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0030 Text en © 2022 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Animal Behaviour
Gavriilidi, Ioanna
De Meester, Gilles
Van Damme, Raoul
Baeckens, Simon
How to behave when marooned: the behavioural component of the island syndrome remains underexplored
title How to behave when marooned: the behavioural component of the island syndrome remains underexplored
title_full How to behave when marooned: the behavioural component of the island syndrome remains underexplored
title_fullStr How to behave when marooned: the behavioural component of the island syndrome remains underexplored
title_full_unstemmed How to behave when marooned: the behavioural component of the island syndrome remains underexplored
title_short How to behave when marooned: the behavioural component of the island syndrome remains underexplored
title_sort how to behave when marooned: the behavioural component of the island syndrome remains underexplored
topic Animal Behaviour
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9039784/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35440235
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2022.0030
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