Neophobia is the fear of novel stimuli or situations. This phenotype has recently received much ecological attention, primarily in the context of decision making. Here, we explore neophobia across biological levels of organisation, first describing types of neophobia among animals and the underlying causes of neophobia, highlighting high levels of risk and uncertainty as key drivers. We place neophobia in the framework of Error Management Theory and Signal Detection Theory, showing how increases in overall risk and uncertainty can lead to costly non‐responses towards novel threats unless individuals lower their response threshold and become neophobic. We then discuss how neophobic behaviour translates into population and evolutionary consequences before introducing neophobia‐like processes at the cellular level, where some phenomena such as allergy and autoimmunity can parallel neophobic behaviour. Finally, we discuss neophobia attenuation, considering how a sudden change in the environment from dangerous to safe can lead to problematic over‐responses (i.e. the ‘maladaptive defensive carry‐over’ hypothesis), and discuss treatment methods for such over‐responses. We anticipate that bridging the concept of neophobia with a process‐centered perspective can facilitate a transfer of insight across organisational levels.

中文翻译：

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新恐惧症的生态框架：从细胞到生物体再到种群

新恐惧症是对新刺激或新情况的恐惧。这种表型最近受到了很多生态关注，主要是在决策方面。在这里，我们探讨跨生物组织水平的新恐惧症，首先描述动物的新恐惧症类型和新恐惧症的根本原因，强调高风险和不确定性是关键驱动因素。我们将恐新症置于错误管理理论和信号检测理论的框架中，展示了整体风险和不确定性的增加如何导致对新威胁的代价高昂的不响应，除非个人降低他们的反应阈值并变得恐新。然后，我们讨论了在细胞水平上引入类似新恐惧症的过程之前，新恐惧症行为如何转化为种群和进化结果，过敏和自身免疫等一些现象可以与新恐惧症行为相提并论。最后，我们讨论新恐惧症的衰减，考虑环境从危险到安全的突然变化如何导致有问题的过度反应（即“适应不良的防御性结转”假设），并讨论这种过度反应的治疗方法。我们预计，将新恐惧症的概念与以流程为中心的观点联系起来可以促进跨组织层面的洞察力转移。