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Playing dice with behavior: drivers of stochastic individuality
Jacob Johnson1, Kirsten Sheehy2, Kate L Laskowski2
1Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior, University of California Davis, Davis, CA 95616, USA.
None:
Animal behavior is often viewed as stemming from predictable genetic and environmental factors. However, despite our best attempts to control genetic and environmental influences on behavior, variation among individuals still persists: what we call 'stochastic individuality'. Increasing research suggests that this might be more than just measurement error, and might instead be rich in biological insights. In this review we examine what is known about stochastic individuality, including potential biological mechanisms and its potential adaptive value, and we provide guidance for how to quantify and test outstanding questions about its role in driving patterns of behavioral diversity. Incorporating stochasticity may be a key missing component in mapping the links from genotype to phenotype and predicting the interplay between phenotype and fitness.
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