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Wildlife Personalities Play a Role in Nature - Coggle Diagram
Wildlife Personalities Play a Role in Nature
Personalities play a key role in ecosystem dynamics and taking on type of individual out can affect evolution.
Animals have personality traits
Example
What stands out about these to Malcolm L. Hunter is the exploratory personalities of the tawny felines.
A mountain lion was sighted several times prowling the suburbs of New Canaan, Conn., and not for the first time.
Understanding animal personalities paints a fuller picture of the natural world, and it plays a role in every aspect of their lives, whether it involves mating or forest regeneration.
Example
A professor placed 48 zebra finches in a cage to see how different personality types find a mate and how that affects parenting.
It turns out they pair by exploration.
More complex animals have highly developed personalities that mirror human traits.
Examples
The famed Giefer grizzly, with a predilection for breaking and entering, would smash out windows or doors in unoccupied summer cabins and help itself to flour, sugar or whatever food had been left behind. The bear ransacked some two dozen cabins.
Among wolves, pack cohesion is very dependent on the alpha female. A strong leader in these matriarchal societies will pin down and discipline errant wolves, but less aggressive leaders won't. and when an alpha female dies, the pack can often disintegrate.
Animal personalities can have profound effects on ecology.
Examples
Rodents play a key role in forest regeneration. Bolder animals disperse seeds father than shy individuals, but a bold animal is also likely to wind up in the claws of hawk or owl.
As plants shift their range to keep pace with an altered climate, mice and squirrels will be put in contact with new, strange-looking seeds, and they will be needed to disperse them, a key ecosystem sevice.
Modifying landscapes in certain ways favors certain types of personalities, altering the course of evolution. And it could have a bearing on whether forests and other ecosystems can adapt to a changing world.
Aggression plays a role in ecosystems by determining territory among species.