Perspectives in Ethology

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Pattern and Adaptation in Individual Behavioral Differences

   • Anne Barrett Clark, Timothy J. Ehlinger

   Pages 1-47

3. Alternative Reproductive Tactics in Birds: Individual Variation in Clutch Size

   • Nadav Nur

   Pages 49-77

4. Critique of Helping Behavior in Birds: A Departure from Functional Explanations

   • Ian G. Jamieson, John L. Craig

   Pages 79-98

5. On the Evolution of Density-Regulating Behavior

   • H. Ronald Pulliam

   Pages 99-124

6. The Evolutionary Dynamics of Mixed Mating Systems: On the Adaptive Value of Selfing and Biparental Inbreeding

   • Marcy K. Uyenoyama, Janis Antonovics

   Pages 125-152

7. The Experience of Experience: An Exogenetic Program for Social Competence

   • Andrew P. King, Meredith J. West

   Pages 153-182

8. A Comparative-Developmental Approach to Understanding Imitation

   • Robert W. Mitchell

   Pages 183-215

9. The Dynamics of Group Behavior

   • Deborah M. Gordon

   Pages 217-231

10. Artificial Design in Natural History: Why It’s So Easy to Understand Animal Behavior

    • J. G. Ollason

    Pages 233-257

11. The Misappropriation of Teleonomy

    • Nicholas S. Thompson

    Pages 259-274

12. Back Matter

    Pages 275-281

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This volume is subtitled "Alternatives" because we wanted to devote at least a part of it to the alternative ways in which members of the same species behave in a given situation. Not so very long ago the supposition among many ethologists was that if one animal behaved in a particular way, then all other members of the same age and sex would do the same. Any differences in the ethogram between individuals were to be attributed to "normal biological variation. " Such thinking is less common nowadays after the discovery of dramatic differences between members of the same species which are of the same age and sex. Alternative modes of behavior, though now familiar, raise particularly interesting questions about current function, evolutionary history, and mechanism. Do the differences rep­ resent equally satisfactory solutions to a given problem? Are some of the solutions the best that those animals can do, given their body size and general condition? Is an alternative solution adopted because so many other individuals have taken the first? If so, do the frequencies reached at equilibrium depend on differential survival of genetically distinct types or do they result from decisions taken by individual animals? If the alternatives are induced during development, as are the castes of social insects, what is required for such triggering? The questions about alternative ways of behaving are addressed in some of the chapters in this volume.

• animal behavior
• animals
• behavior
• environment
• insects
• natural selection
• population
• sex

• Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour, University of Cambridge, Madingley, Cambridge, England

  P. P. G. Bateson

• Department of Zoology, Duke University, Durham, USA

  Peter H. Klopfer

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