Search Results

Evolutionary psychologists have made a strong case that the human mind is particularly adept at certain tasks, such as monitoring compliance with social rules, learning language, and selecting mates, which are likely to have been especially important in human evolution. Human behavioral ecology has shown that the tremendous variations in human behavior across societies largely reflect adaptive responses to variable environments, conceived of as including not only physical elements but also people's social, political, and economic situation and their history. More specifically, human behavioral ecology has shown that human behavior largely conforms to the predictions of models derived from evolutionary theory, particularly in areas crucial to an individual's inclusive fitness, such as food choice and acquisition, social behavior, mate choice and acquisition, parental behavior, and social behavior.

This chapter begins with an overview of behavioral ecology, an optimality-based approach to understanding the natural world that shares conceptual landscape with microeconomics. Organisms are assumed to make decisions based on rules-of-thumb such that fitness, often assessed as lifetime reproductive success, is maximized. They identify and evaluate options, picking the high-fitness choice, sometimes playing social games to achieve this. But much behavior is demonstrably suboptimal. One way this suboptimality arises is through constraints associated with individual differences in the way animals make decisions. Consistent tendencies give particular individuals an advantage relative to others in some environments but not all, explaining why animals show such variability in their behavior. A key issue at present is how an organism’s personality and other features might equip it to deal with human-induced rapid environmental change. Perhaps the species most flexible in behavioral and ecological features, or perhaps those already adapted to variable environments, will do best.

This chapter refines and defends the conception of emotions as literally perceptible in the face. It begins with an overview of Darwin's position on facial expression as espoused in his The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. Later theories of the psychology and evolutionary biology of facial expression are then considered: the Neurocultural View as espoused by P. Ekman, W. Friesen, R. Levenson, and others; and the Behavioral Ecology View as espoused by A. Fridlund and others. After objections to both of these more recent views are raised, a new view of facial expression is espoused, the Strategic Readout View (SRV). The SRV builds on earlier chapters and incorporates the insights of both the Neurocultural and Behavioral Ecology views.

Extensive field data are available for three (out of four) Pongo taxa: the Sumatran P. abelii and the Bornean P. pygmaeus wurmbii of west and central Kalimantan and P. p. morio of east Kalimantan and Sabah. The data show a strong west–east gradient in morphology, behavioral ecology, and life history. From west to east, relative jaw robusticity and tooth enamel thickness increase, the frequency of reliance on non-fruit fallback foods—in particular inner bark of trees—increases dramatically, female day journey length and home range size decreases, the frequency of fat mobilization (and probably deposition) increases (although this has not yet been measured in P. p. morio), brain size decreases, sensitivity to selective logging decreases, average density decreases, and interbirth interval decreases. Social organization shows a similar west–east gradient, with Sumatran orangutans exhibiting a greater degree of sociality by a number of measures, although variation within Borneo is less clear. On Borneo, there may be less developmental arrest, male long calls are slower and have fewer pulses per call, consortships tend to be shorter, and a higher proportion of matings are forced. Geographic variation in orangutan features is probably produced through a combination of plastic developmental responses, genetic differences and cultural processes. The chapter offers a new hypothesis for the adaptive significance of these differences, based on the observed reduction in mean level of fruit production and increased incidence of periods of extreme scarcity from west to east. We highlight important remaining questions.

Emerging interest on the part of behavioural ecologists into the causes and consequences of individually repeatable behaviour substantially crosses over methodology and theory well developed in the field of quantitative genetics. Unfortunately, how behavioural ecological concepts translate to quantitative genetic parameters has been under-recognized by researchers in both groups. In this chapter, this overlap is discussed, behavioural ecology terms like ‘animal personality’ and ‘behavioural syndrome’ explicitly defined as quantitative genetic parameters, and adaptive explanations for between-individual behavioural variation are also examined. In addition, this chapter talks about what is known about patterns of behavioural heritabilities, additive genetic correlations between behaviours, and how behavioural correlations might constrain evolutionary responses. Finally, this chapter describes ways in which theory and empirical research in behavioural ecology might inform attempts among the broader quantitative genetics community to understand how and why variation is distributed.

While the morphology typical of canids adapts them to endurance running, and consequently to life in open habitats, a few species have specialized to other habitats such as rainforests, or even to climbing trees or cliffs. The cliff-dwelling Blanford's fox (Vulpes cana) is one of these exceptional canid species. This chapter presents an overview of the Blanford's fox's phylogeny and taxonomic status, recent distributional changes, the behavioural ecology of a population studied in Israel, and its conservation status.

This chapter addresses some current practices in behavioral ecology that have more often impeded than enhanced our knowledge of social evolution. Among these is the precept that altruism is a fundamental problem in evolution, teleology, labeling, and adaptationism.

Chapter 2 examines a unified description of science as employing idealizations to identify causal patterns in the face of causal complexity. That unified description conceals the full diversity of science’s projects. Attending to even a few contemporary scientific research programs reveals great variation in aims and methods. This chapter surveys investigations from across science: the investigation of cooperation in behavioral ecology; a variety of approaches to investigating human behavior and, in particular, aggression; and, more briefly, projects in fluid dynamics, quantum physics, and climate science. This survey demonstrates that any generalizations about science must accommodate great diversity. Differences among the scientific investigations examined include the aims of the research, the role played by data, and how the project connects to other scientific research. And yet, despite this diversity, all have something in common: they employ idealized representations. This further confirms the extent of idealization in science. Together, the great diversity of scientific projects and the extent of idealization begin to cast doubt on the idea that science uniformly proceeds toward truth, unified representation, or any other unitary aim.

Badgers are carnivorous digging machines. They have short, powerful limbs; long, strong claws; a wedge-shaped head; and no noticeable neck. Out on the Great Plains, that means a lot of prairie dogs for them. Behavioral ecology theory predicts most small carnivores will be solitary, and American badgers conform emphatically. The females defend an area large enough to feed themselves, post it with scent marks, and patrol. Females go where the food is, males go where the females are. Stories about badgers and coyotes teaming up have long been part of the lore of Native Americans.

This chapter discusses the link between evolution and work in a different way. It asks what effects organisms’ work has on the process of evolution itself. It also continues beyond niche construction to demonstrate how research on human behavioral ecology can effectively be used to evaluate human work. This chapter shows that there are likely to be many species for which cultural niche construction plays an evolutionary role, and a multitude of other species in which noncultural niche construction influences evolution. It argues that the traditional optimality methods of behavioral ecology, so far largely restricted to small-scale, traditional societies, could still be of utility in predicting human behavior in the contemporary workplace.

Sewall Wright’s classic Adaptive Landscape has been a highly successful metaphor and scientific concept in evolutionary biology. It has influenced many different research subdisciplines in evolutionary biology and inspired generations of researchers, even though it has also sparked deep scientific and philosophical controversies. Among such subdisciplines are population genetics, evolutionary ecology, quantitative genetics, experimental evolution, conservation biology, speciation and macroevolutionary dynamics, mimicry, saltational evolution, behavioural ecology, molecular biology, protein networks, and theoretical studies on development.

This chapter reviews the evidence for warlike behavior in chimpanzees and discusses what these findings can tell us about human warfare. It begins with a review of the behavioral ecology of aggression, continues with an overview of the behavioral ecology of intergroup aggression in chimpanzees, and concludes with discussion of the implications for understanding the origins of war and prospects for peace in humans.

This chapter presents an introduction to sensory ecology. It explains the key concept of information, including what this is and how animals gather and use information from their environment and from other individuals. It illustrates that the ecology of a species shapes the form and function of its sensory systems to best acquire and process information, and that the specific sensory information available to animals varies greatly between and even within species, owing to what sensory systems they have and how they work. It shows that our own perceptions of the world are probably very different from many other species. The chapter also introduces important considerations and pitfalls in studying behavioural ecology.

The avian food-caching paradigm has greatly contributed to our understanding of a number of cognitive capacities. Although the early work focused on spatial memory, contemporary studies of the cognitive abilities of food-caching birds have a much broader scope. This chapter describes an approach to the comparative cognition of caching which capitalizes on an integrative knowledge of behavioral ecology and comparative psychology. An understanding of behavioral ecology allows one to pose questions about the selective pressures that drive the evolution of cognitive abilities in food-caching birds and how a bird's decisions concerning both caching and cache-recovery are shaped by ecological factors. In comparative psychology, the emphasis is on understanding the general processes of learning, memory, and cognition, and the questions are often inspired by the logical structure of the task. This chapter concludes by asking why an understanding of evolution in general, and of the phylogeny of the studied species in particular, is essential for how we interpret species differences in cognition.

This chapter describes the findings of long-term research on the critically endangered San Salvador rock iguana, Cyclura rileyi. It begins with detailed assessments of all known C. rileyi populations, including population size, morphological features, demographic measures, habitat characteristics, and identified threats. It then describes several projects for invasive species control and habitat restoration. It also describes the behavioral ecology of several populations, including foraging and diet, predation, home range and habitat use, and reproduction.

Two concepts from other areas of biology can shed important light on human nature and its implications for the prospects for social change: phenotypic plasticity and niche construction. Clarifying what these are and how they interact shows the need for substantial revision to the tradition evolutionary perspective on human nature.