Individual variation in responsiveness to environmental change

Abstract

Responsiveness to environmental change can vary not only between species but within species. A variety of studies in evolutionary and behavioural ecology, developmental psychobiology and neuropsychology deal directly or indirectly with this individual variation in responses to change. The aim of this chapter is to review and integrate some of the diverse theoretical and empirical results in a functional and evolutionary framework. While the emphasis is clearly on primates, data on other species serve to augment the primate literature, and also to demonstrate the generality of some results and ideas.