Robert Trivers is a pioneering figure in the field of sociobiology. For Natural Selection and Social Theory, he has selected eleven of his most influential papers, including several classic papers from the early 1970s on the evolution of reciprocal altruism, parent-offspring conflicts, and asymmetry in sexual selection, which helped to establish the centrality of sociobiology, as well as some of his later work on deceit in signalling, sex antagonistic genes, and imprinting. Trivers introduces each paper, setting them in their contemporary context, and critically evaluating them in the light of subsequent work and further developments. The result is a unique portrait of the intellectual development of sociobiology, with valuable insights for evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology.

The Ecology of Social Behavior explores the relationships between ecology and the origins and maintenance of social behavior. The chapters in this book suggest that a consideration of ecological factors is necessary to any paradigm that tries to explain the origins and maintenance of social behavior. Most also suggest that there are some trade-offs between ecology, genetics, and phylogeny in the development and persistence of specific social systems. The book is organized into five parts. Part I provides an overview of the main themes covered in the present volume. Part II contains papers on ecological interactions, including variation in group sizes of forest primates, group foraging, and the origin of monogamy in mammals and fishes. Part III examines the ecology of social mammals. These include the ecological conditions for philopatry and the relationship of habitat variability to sociality in yellow-bellied marmots. Part IV focuses on the ecology of social birds while Part V deals with the ecology of social arthropods.

Social Behavior of Female Vertebrates focuses on the evolution of reproductive behavior in female vertebrates ranging from fish to birds and humans, including issues of mate choice and other factors underlying female attitudes toward males. It also looks at the evolution of mating systems; the co-evolution of the sexes; sex-role reversal; reproductive competition between females; maternal behavior; and how females enhance the investment received by their offspring from others. It also considers other social behaviors that influence the nature of affiliative associations between females. Organized into three parts encompassing 13 chapters, this volume begins with an overview of behavioral biology and sources of variation in female reproductive success. It then discusses the establishment and maintenance of sex biases, sex differences mediated by sexual selection, constraints on female choice in the mottled sculpin, mate choice by females in sexual selection of bird song, and female manipulation of male avoidance of cuckoldry behavior in the ring dove. The reader is also introduced to the evolution of polyandry in shorebirds; reproductive strategies in human females; social and health-seeking behaviors of Taiwanese women; female roles in cooperatively breeding acorn woodpeckers; altruism in coati bands; cooperation and reproductive competition among female African elephants; mate choice in matrilineal macaque groups; and reproductive competition and cooperation among female yellow baboons. This book is a valuable resource for scientists and behavioral biologists, as well as lay people whose interests span a variety of fields.

A substantially revised edition of Jon Elster's critically acclaimed book exploring the nature of social behavior and the social sciences.

The entries in this encyclopedia give readers an opportunity to explore interconnections, clarify commonalities as well as differences or comparative contrasts, discover new fields or ideas of intellectual interest, explore adjacent conceptual zones that may be found to further expand their own disciplinary domains, and also understand better their own academic areas of expertise and the historical provenance of each. -- p. xxxi.

To most biologists, sociobiology represents the concept of strict Darwinian individual selection married to an analytical application of ecological principles and brought to bear on social behavior in an unusually exciting and productive way. Joining the biologists are a small number of social scientists. But there are radically divergent views as to how the field should be delimited, and sociobiology is one of the most widely discussed fields in biology and anthropology today. The symposium on which this book is based was arranged by a biologist and an anthropologist. The participants, leaders in their fields, ably present contrasting and responsible views on current issues. This is the first collection of essays on sociobiology in which opposing views are aired. It is an exciting, timely book and an important historical document.

This compelling volume provides a broad and accessible overview on the rapidly developing field of social neuroscience. A major goal of the volume is to integrate research findings on the neural basis of social behavior across different levels of analysis from rodent studies on molecular neurobiology to behavioral neuroscience to fMRI imaging data on human social behavior.

Since the last edition of this definitive textbook was published in 2013, much has happened in the field of animal behavior. In this fourth edition, Lee Alan Dugatkin draws on cutting-edge new work not only to update and expand on the studies presented, but also to reinforce the previous editions’ focus on ultimate and proximate causation, as well as the book’s unique emphasis on natural selection, learning, and cultural transmission. The result is a state-of-the-art textbook on animal behavior that explains underlying concepts in a way that is both scientifically rigorous and accessible to students. Each chapter in the book provides a sound theoretical and conceptual basis upon which the empirical studies rest. A completely new feature in this edition are the Cognitive Connection boxes in Chapters 2–17, designed to dig deep into the importance of the cognitive underpinnings to many types of behaviors. Each box focuses on a specific issue related to cognition and the particular topic covered in that chapter. As Principles of Animal Behavior makes clear, the tapestry of animal behavior is created from weaving all of these components into a beautiful whole. With Dugatkin’s exquisitely illustrated, comprehensive, and up-to-date fourth edition, we are able to admire that beauty anew.

First published in 1983. The aim of this book was to get a sense of how scientists viewed their own comparative domain. Using references from a variety of fields including anthropology, ethology, genetics, philosophy, psychology, and zoology. It includes a diversity of approaches for discussion on how to compare behavior.