Asymmetry Indexes, Behavioural Instability and the Characterization of Behavioural Patterns

Dear Colleagues,

The structure of sequential behavior and its patterns have attracted the attention of researchers from various disciplines, such as game theory, human and animal behavior, evolutionary ecology, psychology, behavioral economy and cognitive sciences. Sequential behavior seems to be involved in the processes of sequential learning, decision-making processes and exploratory behavior. There are, however, competing hypotheses regarding the mechanisms involved in the complexity of the behavioral responses of organisms when exposed to changing environments. Organisms under stress seem to increase their energy consumption, which has led to the suggestion that stress will, generally, lead to a reduction in intensity and complexity of exploratory behavior. How much the interaction between the genotype and the environment is affecting the individual behavior and how much the behavioral patterns are transmitted across generations is also an interesting and unexplored research area, which is crucial for predicting an organism’s behavioral responses in different environments. The behavioral response to different environmental conditions is often utilized in behavioral ecology studies, where the changes in behavior are quantified in terms of probability of dispersal, distance and speed of movements or time-budget where the time spent on different activities (foraging, resting, explore, etc.) are registered and analyzed in terms of cost benefits. If the behavioral responses are not only plastic, but have a genetic component, they can be implemented in evolutionary ecology theories, where the proportions of organisms with different behavioral responses (organisms with different ‘personalities’) to a stressor will determine the response at the population level. The aim of this special issue is to collect a series of articles which propose the analysis of sequential behavior utilizing the indexes commonly applied for the estimation of developmental instability (fluctuating asymmetry, directional asymmetry and antisymmetry) for the estimation of the degree of “Behavioral Instability”. Deviations from symmetry will be interpreted in ecological and evolutionary terms, where the cost and benefits of changes of the degree of behavioral instability will be analyzed in terms of costs and benefits and its evolutionary significance. Multidisciplinary approaches (theoretical and computational, experimental and empirical approaches) will be presented to validate the proposed approach and to pave the way for future investigation in the novel field of what is best described as behavioral instability.

The first five accepted articles will have their open access fees waived.

Prof. Dr. Cino Pertoldi
Prof. Dr. Torsten Nygaard Kristensen
Prof. Dr. Simon Bahrndorff
Dr. Lars Arve Bach
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Symmetry is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Evolutionary Ecology
• Skewness
• Kurtosis
• locomotor activity