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This chapter argues that the timing of the initiation of a single breeding event, or the initiation of the first of multiple breeding events within the same breeding season, is completely dependent on the female-specific reproductive process of timing of egg production and egg-laying. It discusses how early-season events are critical in determining timing of breeding; fitness consequences of timing decisions; selection on timing of breeding; sex-specific response mechanisms for timing of breeding; physiological mechanisms associated with photoperiod (day length) as a proximate factor; physiological mechanisms associated with temperature as a proximate factor; and physiological mechanisms associated with food availability as a “proximate” factor.

Most field studies incorporate measures of habitat extent and quality. How to devise a protocol for recording habitat is described. The section on physical environment describes how to measure temperature, rainfall and wetness, slope, and water chemistry. The means for documenting vegetation structure, species composition, and habitat types are presented. Methods for assessing analysing habitat relationships are explored.

This final chapter first summarizes the main reasons why the FAO method for estimating undernutrition fails and why the anthropometric approach—despite shortcomings—is to be preferred. It also offers some tentative answers to some of the puzzles identified earlier, e.g. why the incidence of undernutrition is by far the largest in sub‐Saharan Africa while in South Asia, it depends on what indicator of undernutrition is consulted. Finally, this chapter critically discusses the main policy advice emanating from the FAO on how to alleviate undernutrition: enhancement of national food production. It is argued that the emphasis should be on food affordability rather than food availability. Food affordability for the poor can only be accomplished through equitable and broad‐based economic growth that reduces poverty. Economic poverty is the basic cause of not only undernutrition but also of most other social and health‐related plights facing people in sub‐Saharan Africa and South Asia.

The coyote population at Yellowstone National Park (YNP), Wyoming, has not been subject to human persecution for several decades allowing for direct observation of their behaviour, interactions among pack members, and how they deal with changes in their environment. From January 1991 to June 1993, data from over 2500 hours of direct observation were collected on members of five resident packs, five transient individuals, and eight dispersing animals, in the Lamar River Valley of YNP. This chapter synthesizes the findings of this study.

This chapter analyzes the food grain supply chain in India and China. It starts by examining the changing contexts of food security in both countries, and the implications for domestic reforms of agricultural institutions. It then reviews how these reforms have impacted the ability of these countries to provide food grain availability to poorer sections of the population. It introduces a supply chain methodology to map out how food grain procurement and distribution takes place within the agricultural institutional framework in India and China. The existing supply chains in the agricultural sector are subsequently reviewed to identify capacities and constraints in the supply chain. Finally, the chapter comments on the future implications of changes in the agricultural supply chain in both countries for food security and poverty reduction.

This chapter addresses Afghanistan's history of food security and how it changed after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. Food security is built on three main aspects—food availability, food access, and food utilization. The rural economy and agrarian sector in Afghanistan are relatively resilient, even in the face of conflict and drought. However, this does not mean that all people have adequate food or can be classified as food-secure. Afghan households are spending high amounts on food. Although food prices dropped in 2009, allowing Afghan households to have an easier time putting food on their tables, food insecurity still affects many households. The chapter then considers the links between insecurity and access to food. Female-headed households are often the most food insecure, and one can posit that their access to markets or to credit is even more constrained in Taliban-held areas than in other parts of the country.

This chapter examines the types of shifts in food availability, dietary intake patterns, and obesity that have taken place in developing countries during a period of rapid globalization and urbanization. The effects of globalization and urbanization on dietary and activity patterns and nutritional status in developing countries are complex. These forces are associated with potentially beneficial dietary shifts, such as increases in energy sufficiency and reduced micronutrient deficiency, but also appear to promote potentially obesogenic shifts, such as increased intakes of edible oils, animal foods, and caloric sweeteners. While there have been substantial reductions in undernutrition in this period of rapid development and social change, being overweight has become an increasing problem.

Despite their semi-solitary nature, associations among orangutans are more common than expected by chance for most combinations of age-sex classes. Variation in party size is due to variation in food availability or sexual activity, reflecting the two main types of parties encountered in orangutans. Parties may involve mating or are formed around mothers and immatures of various ages, in which social play is the main social activity. Beyond direct association, Sumatran females tend to remain within audible range of the dominant flanged males, using his long calls to adjust their ranging. Females tend to be more philopatric than males, although it is not clear whether males disperse away from their natal range or end up including their natal range within a much larger home range. The accumulating evidence suggests that orangutans live in more than mere neighbourhoods, but in loose communities in which related females form clusters, share a preference for the same dominant flanged male, within whose earshot they tend to remain and whose ranging is more limited. Further study should reveal whether this Sumatra-derived picture also holds for Borneo.

South Asian countries have avoided striking forms of food insecurity—famines and widespread starvation deaths—by increasing food production to keep pace with an increasing population. Coming decades will challenge existing food systems, however, as populations increase, people have more incomes, and climate change, water scarcity, and ecological degradation make it difficult to increase food production. Successful past efforts to address famines hinged on government provision of adequate food at low or no cost to the poor. Contemporary social protection efforts hold the same lesson: large-scale coverage of populations-in-need abates malnutrition and hunger. It can also limit rebel social movements that rely on hunger and lack of food availability to mobilize recruits. Addressing food insecurity, thus, has a double dividend for governments in power: it increases social welfare and reduces challenges to the status quo.

This chapter looks toward food constraints and how the Earth's human-carrying capacity—the maximum population size it can sustain indefinitely without reducing its future support capacity—depends on the level of subsistence we select and the degree of equality we demand. Though we have the ability to control our population growth, to modify our environment, to select and change our sources of food, to increase food production and availability, we still face the ultimate constraint of a growing population on a limited land area. Hence the chapter looks at the factors affecting the Earth's food productivity—such as terrain and climate change—and how these facilitate or impede food supplies for the Earth's population.

This chapter illustrates how to use state- and prediction-based theory (SPT) by applying it to an extremely simple model of how hypothetical foragers select among patches that differ in both food availability and predation risk. This example uses two common techniques of SPT. First, individuals predict conditions using the simplest approach that lets them adapt to changing conditions: by simply assuming that current conditions will persist until the time horizon. The second typical SPT technique is to simplify evaluation of the fitness measure for a particular decision alternative by assuming that the individual will use the alternative until the time horizon. The chapter then evaluates the quality of decisions made via SPT. It also shows how SPT allows one to make models less simple and more realistic and capable.