Bringing animal personality research into the food web arena.

ABSTRACT

While the concept of consistent behavioural differences among individuals of the same population has gained a lot of scientific attention over the last decade, its implementation into a community context with a focus on species-level interactions is still in its infancy. In their study on the effects of animal personalities on predator-prey functional responses of mussel-eating crabs, Toscano & Griffen (2014) introduce a promising avenue for future research synthesizing concepts and ideas from animal behaviour and food web ecology. More precisely, by showing that the interplay of animal personalities and predator and prey body sizes significantly alters the outcome of predator-prey interactions, this study provides important evidence that the concept of animal personalities needs greater consideration if we want to refine and improve current models of predator-prey interactions and the impact of individual-level variation on quantitative food-web dynamics.