Conceptual Breakthroughs in Ethology and Animal Behavior

Conceptual Breakthroughs in Ethology and Animal Behavior highlights, through concise summaries, the most important discoveries and scientific revolutions in animal behavior. These are assessed for their relative impact on the field and their significance to the forward motion of the science of animal behavior. Eighty short essays capture the moment when a new concept emerged or a publication signaled a paradigm shift. How the new understanding came about is explained, and any continuing controversy or scientific conversation on the issue is highlighted. Behavior is a rich and varied field, drawing on genetics, evolution, physiology, and ecology to inform its principles, and this book embraces the wealth of knowledge that comes from the unification of these fields around the study of animals in motion.

The chronological organization of the essays makes this an excellent overview of the history of animal behavior, ethology, and behavioral ecology.

The work includes such topics as Darwin's role in shaping the study of animal behavior, the logic of animal contests, cognition, empathy in animals, and animal personalities. Succinct accounts of new revelations about behavior through scientific investigation and scrutiny reveal the fascinating story of this field. Similar to Dr. John Avise's Contemporary Breakthroughs in Evolutionary Genetics, the work is structured into vignettes that describe the conceptual revolution and assess the impact of the conceptual change, with a score, which ranges from 1-10, providing an assessment of the impact of the new findings on contemporary science.

• Features a lively, brisk writing style and brief entries to enable easy, enjoyable access to this essential information
• Includes topics that cover the range of behavioral biology from mechanism to behavioral ecology
• Can also be used as supplemental material for an undergraduate animal behavior course, or as the foundational text for an upper level or graduate discussion course in advanced animal behavior

Auteur

After receiving his PhD from the University of Kansas in 1977, Dr. Breed began work as a faculty member at the University of Colorado, Boulder and taught as a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology until his retirement in 2019. He taught courses in general biology, animal behavior, insect biology, and tropical biology. His research program focused on the behavior and ecology of social insects, and he worked on ants, bees, and wasps. He studied many aspects of social behavior, including nestmate recognition, division of labor, the genetics of colony defense, the behavior of defensive bees, and communication during colony defense. Dr. Breed was the Executive Editor of the scientific journals Animal Behaviour from 2006-2009 and Insectes Sociaux from 2014-2018.

Contenu

1. 50,000 Years Before Present: The Dawn of Human Evolution 2. 12,000 Years Before Present: Domestication 3. 1623 Social Behavior 4. 1700s Classifying Life 5. 1729 Biological Clocks 6. 1800s Birds in Their Natural Setting 7. 1800s The Great Explorers 8. 1859 Darwin and Behavior 9. 1859 Darwin and Social Insects 10. 1882 George Romanes and the Birth of Comparative Psychology 11. 1894 Morgan's Canon 12. 1914 Sensory Physiology and Behavior 13. 1938 Skinner and Learning 14. 1940 Orientation 15. 1941 Bat Echolocation 16. 1947 The Evolution of Clutch Size 17. 1948 Cognitive Maps 18. 1948 Hormones and Behavior 19. 1948 Information Theory 20. 1953 The Chasm Between Ethology and Comparative Psychology 21. 1954 Life History Phenomena 22. 1954 Zeitgebers (Time-Givers) for Biological Clocks 23. 1956 The Coolidge Effect 24. 1957 Psychophysical Laws 25. 1960 Motivation and Drive 26. 1963 The Four Questions 27. 1964 Dopamine and Reward Reinforcement 28. 1964 Inclusive Fitness and the Evolution of Altruism 29. 1965 Harry Harlow and Social Isolation in Monkeys 30. 1967 Island Biogeography 31. 1968 Tool Use 32. 1969 Territoriality and Habitat Choice 33. 1970 Sperm Competition 34. 1971 Behavioral Genetics 35. 1971 Reciprocal Altruism 36. 1971 Selfish Herds 37. 1973 Episodic Memory 38. 1973 Game Theory 39. 1973 The Many Eyes Hypothesis 40. 1973 The Red Queen 41. 1973 Animal Conflict 42. 1974 Caenorhabditis elegans Behavioral Genetics 43. 1974 Standardizing Behavioral Observation Methods 44. 1974 Parent-Offspring Conflict 45. 1975 Group Selection 46. 1975 Sociobiology 47. 1975 The Handicap Principle 48. 1976 Marginal Value Theorem 49. 1977 Self-medication 50. 1977 The Evolution of Mating Systems 51. 1978 Animal Models for Depression 52. 1978 Theory of Mind 53. 1980 Dispersal 54. 1980 Semantic Communication 55. 1980 The Risk Paradigm 56. 1981 Prisoner's Dilemma 57. 1981 Producers and Scroungers 58. 1982 The Hamilton-Zuk Hypothesis 59. 1982 The Hippocampus and Navigation 60. 1983 Reproductive Skew 61. 1985 An Animal Model for Anxiety 62. 1988 Brood Parasitism 63. 1990 Fear 64. 1990 The Challenge Hypothesis 65. 1991 Pain in Animals 66. 1991 Receiver Psychology 67. 1992 Working Memory 68. 1994 Ecosystem Engineers 69. 1996 Conservation Behavior 70. 1996 The Molecular Basis of Learning 71. 1998 Self-Organization of Social Systems 72. 1998 Gaze Following 73. 1999 Multimodal Communication 74. 2000 Emotion and the Brain 75. 2000 Social Amoebas and Their Genomes 76. 2002 Social Networks 77. 2004 Behavioral Syndromes-Personality in Animals 78. 2004 Maternal Epigenetics 79. 2004 Public and Private Information 80. 2014 Keystone Individuals