Evolutionary Behavioral Ecology by David Westneat, Charles Fox PDF

By David Westneat, Charles Fox

Evolutionary Behavioral Ecology is meant for use as a textual content for graduate scholars and a sourcebook for pro scientists looking an figuring out of the evolutionary and ecological techniques shaping habit throughout a big selection of organisms and a various set of behaviors. Chapters are written via major specialists within the box, delivering a center starting place, a heritage of conceptual advancements, and clean perception into the controversies and topics shaping the ongoing improvement of the sphere. Essays on variation, choice, health, genetics, plasticity, and phylogeny as they pertain to behaviour position the sphere within the broader context of ecology and evolution. those suggestions, besides a variety of theoretical ways are utilized to the evolution of habit in a many contexts, from person decision-making of solitary animals via to advanced social interactions.

Chapters combine conceptual and theoretical ways with contemporary empirical advances to appreciate the evolution of habit, from foraging, facing danger, predator avoidance, and an array of social behaviors, together with combating and cooperation with conspecifics and clash and cooperation among the sexes. the fabric emphasizes integrative and novel ways to behaviour, together with cognitive ecology, character, conservation biology, the hyperlinks among habit and evolution, the evolution of human social habit, and ways that sleek genetic analyses can increase the research of habit.

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One can infer such states from reconstructing the phylogeny of extant species (or populations within species) and comparing the trait of interest among taxa (among populations or among higher level taxa) with this reconstruction in mind. There are many more ways to do this now than when behavioral ecology first became a field, and some fascinating insights can be gained by using phylogenies (chapter 7). Indeed, a comparative study is essential for testing historical hypotheses about transitions in most behavioral traits.

A match between predicted optimal trait value and the population mean suggests a history of stabilizing selection, but it is conceivable that the two correspond by happenstance and that there has been no genetic variation for the trait in the past. This possibility is one of the justifications for employing phylogenetic contrasts (Felsenstein 1985) in comparative studies (chapter 7); if no genetic variation has been seen by selection, then multiple cases of match between conditions and trait are not independent.

Many behavioral ecologists find that traits are currently experiencing stabilizing selection, as appears to be the case for copulation duration in dung flies. Phylogenetic approaches have been more successful in understanding evolution as a result of directional selection than for explaining the stability of a trait due to stabilizing selection. Sober’s definition, which requires evolutionary change in a trait, is ill equipped to deal with maintenance of a trait in its current state. A second historical element to Sober’s definition of adaptation occurs in criteria 3: that the change in state is due to natural selection because the new trait performed a specific function and that the change in state was due to selection via this specific function.

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Evolutionary Behavioral Ecology by David Westneat, Charles Fox


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