Animal Personality and Conservation Biology The Importance of Behavioral Diversity

Introduction There is signifi cant concern regarding the widespread loss of biodiversity and the destructive effects of human activity on the natural environment (Carson 1962; Wilson 2002). Over 500 extinctions of animal species have been recorded since 1600 (Frankham et al. 2002), with this rate signifi cantly increasing over the past 150 years (Primack 1998). Furthermore, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has over 9,000 species of animals on their Red List of Threatened Species, representing 22% of the total species evaluated (IUCN 2010). This current extinction rate is 100–1,000 times greater than the estimated natural rate of extinction based on the fossil record (Primack 1998), indicating we are in the midst of the Earth’s sixth massive extinction. Conservation biology is a crisis-oriented discipline designed to minimize human impacts on and sustain biodiversity (Primack 1998). The goals of conservation biology include preserving genetic variability to maintain the evolutionary potential of populations (Moritz 2002), sustaining habitats and ecosystem processes, minimizing the effects of habitat disturbance on populations, and maintaining an adequate number of reproductive individuals (Gilpin and Soulé 1986; Hedrick and Kalinowski 2000). The study and management of animal personalities can play a key role in conservation biology because the variability of personalities within a population may be related to the genetic diversity of that population. Fluctuating selection pressures maintain personality variation (Réale and Festa-Bianchet 2003; Dingemanse et al. 2004; chapters 7 and 9) and thus preserve higher levels of genetic diversity, which allows populations to adapt to changing environmental conditions and reduces their risk of extinction. Anthropogenic factors are now, however, altering the nature of selection (Stockwell et al. 2003; Carroll 2008; Fenberg and Roy 2008; Hendry et al. 2008), which