Integrating development into models of behavioral individuality

Across the animal kingdom, behavioral individuality is ubiquitous. For the last two decades, researchers have documented not only the existence of this individuality, but also its many important consequences for ecology and evolution. Despite the widely acknowledged importance of consistent behavioral variation, however, we still lack a fundamental understanding of how behavioral individuality emerges and is maintained during biological development. The goal of this project is to advance theory on the development of behavioral individuality by constructing a new generation of developmentally explicit and readily testable mathematical and computational models.