|
Showing 1 - 5 of
5 matches in All Departments
This brief discusses factors associated with group formation,
group maintenance, group population structure, and other events and
processes (e.g., physiology, behavior) related to mammalian social
evolution. Within- and between-lineages, features of prehistoric
and extant social mammals, patterns and linkages are discussed as
components of a possible social tool-kit . "Top-down (predators to
nutrients), as well as bottom-up (nutrients to predators) effects
are assessed. The present synthesis also emphasizes outcomes of
Hebbian (synaptic) decisions on Malthusian parameters (growth rates
of populations) and their consequences for (shifting) mean
fitnesses of populations. Ecology and evolution (EcoEvo) are
connected "via" the organism s norms of reaction (genotype x
environment interactions; life-history tradeoffs of reproduction,
survival, and growth) exposed to selection, with the success of
genotypes influenced by intensities of selection as well as neutral
(e.g. mutation rates) and stochastic effects. At every turn, life
history trajectories are assumed to arise from decisions made by
types responding to competition for limiting resources constrained
by Hamilton s rule (inclusive fitness operations)."
Among the unresolved topics in evolutionary biology and behavioral
ecology are the origins, mechanisms, evolution, and consequences of
developmental and phenotypic diversity. In an attempt to address
these challenges, plasticity has been investigated empirically and
theoretically at all levels of biological organization-from
biochemical to whole organism and beyond to the population,
community, and ecosystem levels. Less commonly explored are
constraints (e.g., ecological), costs (e.g., increased response
error), perturbations (e.g., alterations in selection intensity),
and stressors (e.g., resource limitation) influencing not only
selective values of heritable phenotypic components but, also,
decisions and choices (not necessarily conscious ones) available to
individuals in populations. Treating extant mammals, the primary
purpose of the proposed work is to provide new perspectives on
common themes in the literature on robustness ("functional
diversity"; differential resistance to "deconstraint" of conserved
elements) and weak robustness (the potential to restrict plasticity
and evolvability), plasticity (variation expressed throughout the
lifetimes of individuals in a population setting "evolvability
potential"), and evolvability (non-lethal phenotypic novelties
induced by endogenous and/or exogenous stimuli). The proposed
project will place particular emphasis upon the adaptive complex in
relation to endogenous (e.g., genomes, neurophysiology) and
exogenous (abiotic and biotic, including social environments)
organismal features discussed as regulatory and environmental
perturbations with the potential to induce, and, often, constrain
variability and novelty of form and function
Reproductive skew is the study of how reproduction is partitioned
in animal societies. In many social animals reproduction is shared
unequally and leads to a reproductive skew among group members.
Skew theory investigates the genetic and ecological factors causal
to the partitioning of reproduction in animal groups and may yield
fundamental insights into the evolution of animal sociality. This
book brings together new theory and empirical work, mostly in
vertebrates, to test assumptions and predictions of skew models. It
also gives an updated critical review of skew theory. The team of
leading contributors cover a wide range of species, from insects to
humans, and discuss both ultimate (evolutionary) and proximate
(immediate) factors influencing reproductive skew. Academic
researchers and graduate students alike with an interest in
evolution and sociality will find this material stimulating and
exciting.
|
You may like...
Barbie
Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling
Blu-ray disc
R266
Discovery Miles 2 660
Tenet
John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, …
DVD
R53
Discovery Miles 530
Barbie
Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, …
DVD
R310
R194
Discovery Miles 1 940
|