Social grouping is omnipresent in the animal kingdom. Considerable research has focused on understanding how animal groups form and function, including how collective behaviour emerges via self-organising mechanisms and how phenotypic variation drives the behaviour and functioning of animal groups. However, we still lack a mechanistic understanding of the role of phenotypic variation in collective animal behaviour. Here we present a common framework to quantify individual heterogeneity and synthesise the literature to systematically explain and predict its role in collective behaviour across species, contexts, and traits. We show that individual heterogeneity provides a key intermediary mechanism with broad consequences for sociality (e.g., group structure, functioning), ecology (e.g., response to environmental change), and evolution. We also outline a roadmap for future research.

中文翻译：

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个体异质性在集体动物行为中的作用。

在动物界，社会群体无处不在。大量研究集中在理解动物群的形成和功能，包括集体行为如何通过自组织机制出现以及表型变异如何驱动动物群的行为和功能。但是，我们仍然缺乏对表型变异在集体动物行为中的作用的机械理解。在这里，我们提出了一个量化个体异质性的通用框架，并对文献进行综合，以系统地解释和预测其在跨物种，环境和性状的集体行为中的作用。我们表明，个体异质性提供了一种关键的中介机制，对社会性（例如，群体结构，功能），生态学（例如，对环境变化的响应）和进化具有广泛的影响。