Animal Behavior

Recent studies suggest that populations and species often exhibit behavioral syndromes; that is, suites of correlated behaviors across situations. An example is an aggression syndrome where some individuals are more aggressive, whereas others are…

Recent studies in the field of behavioural ecology have revealed intriguing variation in behaviour within single populations. Increasing evidence suggests that individual animals differ in their average level of behaviour displayed across a range of…

How should ecologists and evolutionary biologists analyze nonnormal data that involve random effects? Nonnormal data such as counts or proportions often defy classical statistical procedures. Generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs) provide a more…

Individual humans, and members of diverse other species, show consistent differences in aggressiveness, shyness, sociability and activity. Such intraspecific differences in behaviour have been widely assumed to be non-adaptive variation surrounding…

Eusociality, in which some individuals reduce their own lifetime reproductive potential to raise the offspring of others, underlies the most advanced forms of social organization and the ecologically dominant role of social insects and humans. For…

Social animals live and interact together, forming complex relationships and social structure. These relationships can have important fitness consequences, but most studies do not explicitly measure those relationships. An approach that explicitly…

Sexual selection is a concept that has probably been misunderstood and misrepresented more than any other idea in evolutionary biology, confusion that continues to the present day. We are not entirely sure why this is, but sexual politics seems to…

The past two decades have seen extensive growth of sexual selection research. Theoretical and empirical work has clarified many components of pre- and postcopulatory sexual selection, such as aggressive competition, mate choice, sperm utilization…

In recent years, the evidence suggesting that honey bees communicate with a "dance language" has been stronly attached on both theoretical and experimental grounds. An alternative theory has been proposed by which bees are supposed to use only odors…

A genetical mathematical model is described which allows for interactions between relatives on one another's fitness. Making use of Wright's Coefficient of Relationship as the measure of the proportion of replica genes in a relative, a quantity is…

Explanations of cooperation between non-kin in animal societies often suggest that individuals exchange resources or services and that cooperation is maintained by reciprocity. But do cooperative interactions between unrelated individuals in…

Temperament describes the idea that individual behavioural differences are repeatable over time and across situations. This common phenomenon covers numerous traits, such as aggressiveness, avoidance of novelty, willingness to take risks,…

Charles Darwin's (1871) treatment of the topic of sexual selection was sometimes confused because he lacked a general framework within which to relate the variables he perceived to be important: sex-linked inheritance, sex ratio at conception,…

Animal personality traits such as boldness, activity and aggressiveness have been described for many animal species. However, why some individuals are consistently bolder or more active than others, for example, is currently obscure. Given that…

Recently, researchers in several areas of ecology and evolution have begun to change the way in which they analyze data and make biological inferences. Rather than the traditional null hypothesis testing approach, they have adopted an approach…

Information is a crucial currency for animals from both a behavioural and evolutionary perspective. Adaptive behaviour relies upon accurate estimation of relevant ecological parameters; the better informed an individual, the better it can develop…

Research on sexual selection shows that the evolution of secondary sexual characters in males and the distribution of sex differences are more complex than was initially suggested but does not undermine our understanding of the evolutionary…

There is increasing interest in individual differences in animal behaviour. Recent research now suggests that an individual's behaviour, once considered to be plastic, may be more predictable than previously thought. Here, we take advantage of the…

We review evolutionary processes and mechanisms that gave rise to the diversity of primate social systems. We define social organization, social structure and mating system as distinct components of a social system. For each component, we summarize…

Considerable interspecific variation in female social relationships occurs in gregarious primates, particularly with regard to agonism and cooperation between females and to the quality of female relationships with males. This variation exists…