Dispersers – individuals that leave their natal territory in order to find their own breeding territory – are often not a random subset of a population. Instead, the propensity to disperse correlates with individual traits such as aggressiveness, boldness, exploratory behaviour etc. These dispersal syndromes, in turn, are of variable kind in natural populations.

There is a given conflict between different traits that are necessary during different phases of the colonisation of new habitat, and the mechanisms that underlie colonisation processes are not well understood. This is of relevance not only for within-population colonisation of empty patches, but also for populations that are engaged in range expansion.

We investigate how differences in dispersal behaviour evolve and are maintained in populations in different ecological scenarios, while populations that exhibit non-equilibrium dynamics are in our special interest.