These notes are intended to help undergraduates who need to understand something of behavior both for its intrinsic interest and for their future careers in medicine, biology, psychology, anthropology, veterinary medicine, and nursing. In Emory University's Biology Department, a single-semester course called Evolutionary Perspectives on Behavior is given to undergraduates. It amounts to four, not eight months of study, so a great deal of compression is essential. There are several excellent textbooks available that deal with behavioral science from different perspectives, but we have found them too compendious for use in a short course when students are so heavily burdened; it is unsatisfactory to direct them to a chapter here and there in several different books or to this or that review article and original paper. In this volume, we have tried effectively and inexpensively to put in one place what we know is needed. The topics we have selected deal with their subjects in a simple, straightforward way without being too superficial. We could not cover everything and the gaps are not entirely idiosyncratic but reflect what students are given very well in other courses. Thus, there is no mention of the physiology of the axon and synapse; learning, memory, cognition, and basic genetics are hardly touched upon because students know about these matters from elsewhere.
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
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Dateigröße
ISBN-13
978-1-4615-1239-4 (9781461512394)
DOI
10.1007/978-1-4615-1239-4
Schweitzer Klassifikation
1 The Study of Behavior: History.- A Brief History.- Some Theory and Terminology.- Warnings, Fallacies, and Pitfalls.- 2 Some Ethological Concepts.- Evolutionary Basis of Behavior.- Ethology's Objectives.- General Methods.- Fixed Action Patterns (FAPs).- Conflict Behaviors.- Vacuum Activity.- Ritualization and Displays.- 3 Some More Ethological Concepts.- Sign Stimuli, Releasers, and Innate Releasing Mechanisms.- Programmed Learning and Imprinting.- Drive or Motivation.- 4 Assessment of Hereditary Influences.- Indirect Methods.- Direct Methods.- 5 Behavioral Endocrinology: Gonadal Hormones.- Synthesis and Major Sites of Production.- Transport.- Mechanisms of Action.- Organizational Effects During Development.- Activational Effects in Adults.- 6 Behavioral Endocrinology: Stress and Adrenal Hormones.- Definition.- Types of Stress.- The Stress Responses of the Body.- The Adrenal Medulla and Sympathetic Arousal.- The Hypothalamus and the Adrenal Cortex.- Corticosteroid Production.- Corticosteroid Metabolism.- Habituation to Stress.- Functions of Stress.- Psychosomatic Medicine.- Two Psychiatric Syndromes.- 7 Biological Rhythms.- Functions of Biological Rhythms.- Circadian Rhythms (23-26 Hours).- Circatidal Rhythms (12.4 Hours).- Circalunar Rhythms (14.8 Days).- Monthly Rhythms (29.5 Days).- Circannual Rhythms (365 Days).- Rhythms in Human Disease.- 8 Orientation and Navigation.- Orienting Responses.- Navigation.- Migration.- 9 Feeding, Foraging, and Predation.- Feeding Behavior.- Foraging.- Predatory Techniques and Antipredator Defense.- 10 Social Behavior.- Social Systems.- Benefits of Sociality.- Improved Care of Offspring.- Costs of Sociality.- Philopatry and Dispersal.- Evolution of Cooperative Behavior.- Mechanisms of Kin Recognition.- Environmental and CulturalInfluences in Primates.- 11 Communication.- Definition.- Functions of Communication.- "Honesty" and "Deception" in Communication.- Communicatory Signals.- Sensory Channels of Communication.- 12 Agonistic Behavior.- Interspecific Agonism.- Intraspecific Agonism.- Comparisons between Interspecific and Intraspecific Agonism.- Human Aggression.- 13 Sexual Selection.- Asexual and Sexual Reproduction.- Sex Determination.- Sex Ratio (SR).- Theoretical Considerations.- Intrasexual Selection.- Intersexual (Epigamic) Selection.- 14 Courtship and Mating.- Factors Important for the Onset of Courtship and Mating.- Functions of Courtship.- Mating Categories.- Bisexual Behavior.- 15 Parental Behavior and Mating Systems.- Models of the Parent-Offspring Relationship.- Evolution of Parental Care.- Mating Systems.- 16 Nonhuman Primates.- Ethology.- Sociobiology.- Language in Apes.- 17 Humans.- Human Ethology.- Human Sociobiology.- References.- Author Index.
