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The book reviews theoretical and empirical predictions concerning the evolution of parental care and examines the extent to which these are supported by empirical evidence.
Parental care includes a wide variety of traits that enhance offspring development and survival. This novel book provides a fresh perspective on the current state of the study of the evolution of parental care, written by some of the top researchers in the field, and taking a broad taxonomic approach.
Parental care includes a wide variety of traits that enhance offspring development and survival. It is taxonomically widespread and is central to the maintenance of biodiversity through its close association with other phenomena such as sexual selection, life-history evolution, sex allocation, sociality, cooperation and conflict, growth and development, genetic architecture, and phenotypic plasticity. This novel book provides a fresh perspective on the study of the evolution of parental care based on contributions from some of the top researchers in the field. It provides evidence that the dynamic nature of family interactions, and particularly the potential for co-evolution among family members, has contributed to the great diversity of forms of parental care and life-histories across as well as within taxa. The Evolution of Parental Care aims to stimulate students and researchers alike to pursue exciting new directions in this fascinating and important area of behavioural and evolutionary biology. It will be of relevance and use to those working in the fields of animal behaviour, ecology, evolution, and genetics, as well as related disciplines such as psychology and sociology.
The editors of this volume have honored me by their invitation to write its Fore word, an invitation extended because of my editing a book on the maternal behav ior of mammals in 1963. Much as I would like to think that I had opened a new area of study-and so played some part in the appearance of this fine new collec tion of chapters-the facts are quite otherwise. That in 1963 I could assemble the efforts of many distinguished investigators shows that the topic had already engaged their attention, and had for some years past. But even then, the topic had origins extending much farther into the past, to mention only Wiesner and Sheard's book Maternal Behavior in the Rat of 1933. Nevertheless, in 1963 it seemed to me that the study of maternal care in mammals had lagged behind the study of other kinds of social behavior. The present volume does much to establish parental care of the young as a topic central to an understanding of the relation between ontogeny and phylogeny, to the development of the young, to the social organization of the species, and to its preservation. It may now be seen not only as interesting but as a most signifi cant pattern of behavior among mammals.
One hundred years after Darwin considered how sexual selection shapes the behavioral and morphological characteristics of males for acquiring mates, Parker realized that sexual selection continues after mating through sperm competition. Because females often mate with multiple males before producing offspring, selection favors adaptations that allow males to preempt sperm from previous males and to prevent their own sperm from preemption by future males. Since the 1970s, this area of research has seen exponential growth, and biologists now recognize sperm competition as an evolutionary force that drives such adaptations as mate guarding, genital morphology, and ejaculate chemistry across all animal taxa. The insects have been critical to this research, and they still offer the greatest potential to reveal fully the evolutionary consequences of sperm competition. This book analyzes and extends thirty years of theoretical and empirical work on insect sperm competition. It considers both male and female interests in sperm utilization and the sexual conflict that can arise when these differ. It covers the mechanics of sperm transfer and utilization, morphology, physiology, and behavior. Sperm competition is shown to have dramatic effects on adaptation in the context of reproduction as well as far-reaching ramifications on life-history evolution and speciation. Written by a top researcher in the field, this comprehensive, up-to-date review of the evolutionary causes and consequences of sperm competition in the insects will prove an invaluable reference for students and established researchers in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology.
The editors of this volume have honored me by their invitation to write its Fore word, an invitation extended because of my editing a book on the maternal behav ior of mammals in 1963. Much as I would like to think that I had opened a new area of study-and so played some part in the appearance of this fine new collec tion of chapters-the facts are quite otherwise. That in 1963 I could assemble the efforts of many distinguished investigators shows that the topic had already engaged their attention, and had for some years past. But even then, the topic had origins extending much farther into the past, to mention only Wiesner and Sheard's book Maternal Behavior in the Rat of 1933. Nevertheless, in 1963 it seemed to me that the study of maternal care in mammals had lagged behind the study of other kinds of social behavior. The present volume does much to establish parental care of the young as a topic central to an understanding of the relation between ontogeny and phylogeny, to the development of the young, to the social organization of the species, and to its preservation. It may now be seen not only as interesting but as a most signifi cant pattern of behavior among mammals.
Recent field studies of a variety of mammalian species reveal a surprisingly high frequency of infanticide - the killing of unweaned or otherwise maternally dependent offspring. Similarly, studies of birds, fish, amphibians, and invertebrates demonstrate egg and larval mortality in these species, a phenomenon directly analogous to infanticide in mammals. In this collection, Hausfater and Hrdy draw together work on animal and human infanticide and place these studies in a broad evolutionary and comparative perspective.Infanticide presents the theoretical background and taxonomic distribution of infanticide, infanticide in nonhuman primates, infanticide in rodents, and infanticide in humans. It examines closely sex allocation and sex ratio theory, surveys the phylogeny of mammalian interbirth intervals, and reviews data on sources of egg and larval mortality in a variety of invertebrate and lower vertebrate species. Dealing with infanticide in nonhuman primates, two chapters critically examine data on infanticide in langurs and its broader theoretical implications. By reviewing sources of infant mortality in populations of small mammals and new laboratory analyses of the causes and consequences of infanticide, this work explores such issues as the ontogeny of infanticide, proximate cues of infants and females which elicit infanticidal behavior in males, the genetical basis of infanticide, and the hormonal determinants.Hausfater and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, through their selection of materials for this book, evaluate the frequency, causes, and function of infanticide. Historical, ethnographic, and recent data on infanticide are surveyed. "Infanticide" summarizes current research on the evolutionary origins and proximate causation of infanticide in animals and man. As such it will be indispensable reading for anthropologists and behavioral biologists as well as ecologists, psychologists, demographers, and epidemiologists.
The book aims to integrate our understanding of mammalian societies into a novel synthesis that is relevant to behavioural ecologists, ecologists, and anthropologists. It adopts a coherent structure that deals initially with the characteristics and strategies of females, before covering those of males, cooperative societies and hominid societies. It reviews our current understanding both of the structure of societies and of the strategies of individuals; it combines coverage of relevant areas of theory with coverage of interspecific comparisons, intraspecific comparisons and experiments; it explores both evolutionary causes of different traits and their ecological consequences; and it integrates research on different groups of mammals with research on primates and humans and attempts to put research on human societies into a broader perspective.
Anyone who has ever held a baby—or observed a nesting bird—will find much to inform and entertain in this enchantingly written and thoroughly researched book. Allport revels in the marvelous diversity of care in the animal world. She shows us our place in that world with great humor, knowledge, and common sense.