Individual innovativeness and personality in a great tit population

John Quinn

University College Cork, Cork, Ireland j.quinn@ucc.ie

(talk in English)

Why individuals vary in their so-called personalities and cognitive abilities has been the subject of considerable debate in recent years. Specifically the relative importance of adaptive processes and phenotypic plasticity in driving this variation remains unclear. Here I report on recent research on the great tit in Wytham Wood, Oxford, where exploration behaviour and problem solving performance have been assayed in large numbers of individuals. I will explore a variety of proximate causes of variation in these traits, examine their functional significance in the wild, and ask what if any consequences these traits have for populations.

1. M Cole, E.F. & Quinn, J.L. 2012. Personality and innovativeness explain individual variation in competitive ability in the wild. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B 279:1168–1175 (doi: 10.1098/rspb.2011.1539).
2. Morand-Ferron, J. & Quinn, J.L. (2015). Fitness outcomes of cognitive variation within natural populations. Trends in Cognitive Science. 19:235-237
3. Cole, E.F., Morand-Ferron, J., Hinks, A., Quinn, J.L. 2012. Cognitive ability influences reproductive life history variation in the wild. Current Biology 22: 1808-1812.