title: From Individuals to Groups and Back: The Evolutionary Implications of Group Phenotypic Composition.
abstract: There is increasing interest in understanding the processes that maintain phenotypic variation in groups, populations, or communities. Recent studies have investigated how the phenotypic composition of groups or aggregations (e.g., its average phenotype or phenotypic variance) affects ecological and social processes, and how multi-level selection can drive phenotypic covariance among interacting individuals. However, we argue that these questions are rarely studied together. We present a unified framework to address this gap, and discuss how group phenotypic composition (GPC) can impact on processes ranging from individual fitness to population demography. By emphasising the breadth of topics affected, we hope to motivate more integrated empirical studies of the ecological and evolutionary implications of GPC.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panamá, República de Panamá; Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. Electronic address: damien.farine@zoo.ox.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Damien R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Farine
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA. Electronic address: makitsimple@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Pierre-Olivier
authors.initials: PO
authors.lastname: Montiglio
authors.affiliation: Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California Davis, Davis, CA, USA. Electronic address: orr.spiegel@mail.huji.ac.il.
authors.forename: Orr
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Spiegel
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D005075:Biological Evolution; D055669:Ecological and Environmental Phenomena; D010641:Phenotype; D011157:Population Dynamics; D012641:Selection, Genetic