Behaviour is highly flexible, but does this make it special compared to other types of traits? We review how considering indirect genetic effects—the influence of genes expressed by social partners—can inform behavioural ecology research by improving predictions of behavioural optima in different social, evolutionary and ecological contexts. We argue that this framework is ideal for empirically testing behaviour’s proposed, yet heavily debated, unique role in shaping evolutionary patterns and processes.
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Bailey et al. (2017) studied this question.
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