Individual differences, uniqueness, and individuality in behavioural ecology

Trappes, Rose

doi:10.1016/j.shpsa.2022.08.007

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 88 publications

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“…Individual-based approaches in ecology seek a mechanistic understanding of how variation among individual organisms generates or contributes to patterns at population, community and ecosystem levels (but for an in-depth discussion, see [ 44 ]). What makes an organism unique?…”

Section: Background and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Individuality in behavioural ecology is defined as the phenotypic and ecological uniqueness of single individuals; namely, what makes an individual phenotypically unique is generally not a single phenotypic property, but rather the possession of a whole set of phenotypic traits together with unique sets of ecological relations [ 44 ]. Features like behaviour, habitat use, feeding preference, social relations, and so on, are core to what makes individuals unique.…”

Section: Background and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Using Gaze for Behavioural Biometrics

D’Amelio

Patania

Buršić

et al. 2023

Sensors

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A principled approach to the analysis of eye movements for behavioural biometrics is laid down. The approach grounds in foraging theory, which provides a sound basis to capture the uniqueness of individual eye movement behaviour. We propose a composite Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process for quantifying the exploration/exploitation signature characterising the foraging eye behaviour. The relevant parameters of the composite model, inferred from eye-tracking data via Bayesian analysis, are shown to yield a suitable feature set for biometric identification; the latter is eventually accomplished via a classical classification technique. A proof of concept of the method is provided by measuring its identification performance on a publicly available dataset. Data and code for reproducing the analyses are made available. Overall, we argue that the approach offers a fresh view on either the analyses of eye-tracking data and prospective applications in this field.

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Section: Background and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Background and Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Gaze for Behavioural Biometrics

D’Amelio

Patania

Buršić

et al. 2023

Sensors

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“…Biotelemetry has become an important tool in the broader shift in behavioural ecology and related disciplines towards studying individual differences and using individual-based approaches (Justus, 2014;Sarkar, 2016;Weisberg, 2014;Wilson, 2004). Having multiple observations for a single individual is essential for studying phenomena such as animal personality and individual ecological specialisation, because these phenomena generally require an individual to be consistent over time (Trappes, 2022;Trappes et al in prep.). In addition, tracking relatively large numbers of individuals is important for comparing individuals' behaviour to measure betweenindividual variation.…”

Section: A Data Rich Disciplinementioning

confidence: 99%

How tracking technology is transforming animal ecology: epistemic values, interdisciplinarity, and technology-driven scientific change

Trappes

2023

Synthese

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Tracking technology has been heralded as transformative for animal ecology. In this paper I examine what changes are taking place, showing how current animal movement research is a field ripe for philosophical investigation. I focus first on how the devices alter the limitations and biases of traditional field observation, making observation of animal movement and behaviour possible in more detail, for more varied species, and under a broader variety of conditions, as well as restricting the influence of human presence and observer bias. I reconstruct these as shifts in scope, objectivity, accuracy and fruitfulness. The second transformation is slightly less obvious but equally significant for animal ecology. Tracking devices generate complex data that demands both statistical and biological expertise, which has led to increasingly frequent and intensive collaborations between statisticians and biologists. Based on interviews, I examine how researchers in these interdisciplinary collaborations negotiate the collection, analysis and interpretation of movement data, integrating research interests, methodological constraints, previous field observations, and background theory. Tracking technology is therefore also shifting which disciplinary considerations are brought to bear on research into animal movement and behaviour and how this research is conducted.

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“…Various scholars have attempted to address the conceptual problems underlying the idea of reciprocal causation between organisms and environments (see, for example, Baedke and Buklijas, 2022;Pontarotti et al, 2022;Prieto and Fábregas-Tejeda, 2022;Saborido and Heras-Escribano, 2023) and its possible theoretical extensions in domains such as human health (e.g., through the notion of 'adaptivity'; see Menatti et al, 2022) or the study of cognition as a biological phenomenon that is widely distributed and needs to be understood beyond computational-representational frameworks (see, e.g., Corris, 2020;Feiten, 2020;Sims, 2021). In elds such as behavioral ecology, intra-populational variation at the organismic (and not just genetic) level has been given increased attention, especially the ecological and phenotypic singularities of token organisms that have important consequences for evolutionary paths (for a philosophical analysis of these developments, see Trappes, 2022). In general, the uniqueness of token organisms and the temporal dimensions of ontogenetic processes are becoming fertile topics of inquiry that open unexplored questions for philosophers of biology interested in the controversy over what constitutes 'biological individuality' (see Kaiser and Trappes, 2021).…”

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confidence: 99%