Human behavioral ecology - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Human behavioral ecology (HBE) or human evolutionary ecology applies the principles of evolutionary theory and optimization

Optimization (mathematics)

In mathematics, computational science, or management science, mathematical optimization refers to the selection of a best element from some set of available alternatives....

to the study of human behavior

Human behavior

Human behavior refers to the range of behaviors exhibited by humans and which are influenced by culture, attitudes, emotions, values, ethics, authority, rapport, hypnosis, persuasion, coercion and/or genetics....

al and cultural diversity

Cultural diversity

Cultural diversity is having different cultures respect each other's differences. It could also mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole...

. HBE examines the adaptive

Adaptation

An adaptation in biology is a trait with a current functional role in the life history of an organism that is maintained and evolved by means of natural selection. An adaptation refers to both the current state of being adapted and to the dynamic evolutionary process that leads to the adaptation....

design of traits, behaviors, and life histories

Life history theory

Life history theory posits that the schedule and duration of key events in an organism's lifetime are shaped by natural selection to produce the largest possible number of surviving offspring...

of humans in an ecological context. One aim of modern human behavioral ecology is to determine how ecological and social

Social

The term social refers to a characteristic of living organisms...

factors influence and shape behavioral flexibility within and between human populations. Among other things, HBE attempts to explain variation in human behavior as adaptive solutions to the competing life-history demands of growth, development, reproduction, parental care, and mate acquisition.

HBE overlaps with evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...

, human or cultural ecology

Cultural ecology

Cultural ecology studies the relationship between a given society and its natural environment as well as the life-forms and ecosystems that support its lifeways . This may be carried out diachronically , or synchronically...

, and decision theory

Decision theory

Decision theory in economics, psychology, philosophy, mathematics, and statistics is concerned with identifying the values, uncertainties and other issues relevant in a given decision, its rationality, and the resulting optimal decision...

. It is most prominent in disciplines such as anthropology and psychology where human evolution is considered relevant for a holistic understanding of
human behavior or in economics where self-interest, methodological individualism

Methodological individualism

Methodological individualism is the theory that social phenomena can only be accurately explained by showing how they result from the intentional states that motivate the individual actors. The idea has been used to criticize historicism, structural functionalism, and the roles of social class,...

, and maximization are key elements in modeling behavior . It has been resisted in departments such as sociology and political science where the findings on human evolution are either ignored or regarded as irrelevant.

Evolutionary theory

Human behavioral ecology rests upon a foundation of evolutionary theory. This includes aspects of both general evolutionary theory and established middle-level evolutionary theories, as well. Aspects of general evolutionary theory include:

Natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....

, the process by which individual organism
Organism
In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...

s with favorable traits are more likely to survive and reproduce
Biological reproduction
Reproduction is the biological process by which new "offspring" individual organisms are produced from their "parents". Reproduction is a fundamental feature of all known life; each individual organism exists as the result of reproduction...

.
Sexual selection
Sexual selection
Sexual selection, a concept introduced by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, is a significant element of his theory of natural selection...

, the theory
Scientific theory
A scientific theory comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules that express relationships between observations of such concepts...

that competition for mates between individuals of the same sex results in differential mating and reproduction.
Kin selection
Kin selection
Kin selection refers to apparent strategies in evolution that favor the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Charles Darwin was the first to discuss the concept of group/kin selection...

, the changes in gene frequency across generations that are driven at least in part by interactions between related individuals, and
Inclusive fitness
Inclusive fitness
In evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, the inclusive fitness of an organism is the sum of its classical fitness and the number of equivalents of its own offspring it can add to the population by supporting others...

, the sum of an individual's own reproductive success, (natural and sexual selection), plus the effects the individual's actions have on the reproductive success of that individual's kin, (kin selection).

Middle-level evolutionary theories used in HBE include:

The theory of parental investment
Parental investment
In evolutionary biology, parental investment is any parental expenditure that benefits one offspring at a cost to parents' ability to invest in other components of fitness...

, which predicts that the sex making the largest investment in lactation
Lactation
Lactation describes the secretion of milk from the mammary glands and the period of time that a mother lactates to feed her young. The process occurs in all female mammals, however it predates mammals. In humans the process of feeding milk is called breastfeeding or nursing...

, nurturing and protecting offspring
Offspring
In biology, offspring is the product of reproduction, of a new organism produced by one or more parents.Collective offspring may be known as a brood or progeny in a more general way...

will be more discriminating in mating and that the sex that invests less in offspring will compete for access to the higher investing sex.
Parent-offspring conflict
Parent-offspring conflict
Parent–offspring conflict is a term coined in 1974 by Robert Trivers. It is used to signify the evolutionary conflict arising from differences in optimal parental investment to an offspring from the standpoint of the parent and the offspring...

, which predicts that because the genetic interests of parents and offspring are not identical, offspring will be selected to manipulate their parents in order to ensure higher investment, and that, conversely, parents will be selected to manipulate their offspring.
The theory of reciprocal altruism
Reciprocal altruism
In evolutionary biology, reciprocal altruism is a behaviour whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism's fitness, with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time...

, a form of altruism
Altruism
Altruism is a concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures, and a core aspect of various religious traditions, though the concept of 'others' toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism is the opposite of...

in which one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation
Reciprocation
Reciprocation may refer to:* Reciprocating motion, a type of oscillatory motion, as in the action of a reciprocating saw* Reciprocation in geometry, an operation with circles that involves transforming each point in plane into its polar line and each line in the plane into its pole...

.
The Trivers–Willard hypothesis, which proposes that parents should invest more in the sex that gives them the greatest reproductive payoff (grandchildren) with increasing or marginal investment.
r/K selection theory
R/K selection theory
In ecology, r/K selection theory relates to the selection of combinations of traits in an organism that trade off between quantity or quality of offspring...

, which, in ecology
Ecology
Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

, relates to the selection of traits in organisms that allow success in particular environments. r-selected species - in unstable or unpredictable environments - produce many offspring, any individual one of which is unlikely to survive to adulthood, while K-selected species - in stable or predictable environments - invest more heavily in fewer offspring, each of which has a better chance of surviving to adulthood.
Evolutionary game theory
Evolutionary game theory
Evolutionary game theory is the application of Game Theory to evolving populations of lifeforms in biology. EGT is useful in this context by defining a framework of contests, strategies and analytics into which Darwinian competition can be modelled. It originated in 1973 with John Maynard Smith...

, the application of population genetics
Population genetics
Population genetics is the study of allele frequency distribution and change under the influence of the four main evolutionary processes: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene flow. It also takes into account the factors of recombination, population subdivision and population...

-inspired models of change in gene frequency in populations to game theory
Game theory
Game theory is a mathematical method for analyzing calculated circumstances, such as in games, where a person’s success is based upon the choices of others...

.
Evolutionary stable strategy, which refers to a strategy
Strategy (game theory)
In game theory, a player's strategy in a game is a complete plan of action for whatever situation might arise; this fully determines the player's behaviour...

, which if adopted by a population, cannot be invaded by any competing alternative strategy.

Ecological selectionism

Ecological selectionism refers to the assumption that humans are highly flexible in their behaviors. Furthermore, it assumes that various ecological forces select for various behaviors that optimize humans' inclusive fitness in their given ecological context.

The piecemeal approach

The piecemeal approach refers to taking a reductionist approach as opposed to a holistic approach in studying human socioecological behavior. Human behavioral ecologists assume that by taking complex social phenomena, (e.g., marriage patterns, foraging behaviors, etc.), and then breaking them down into sets of components involving decisions and constraints that they are in a better position to create models and make predictions involving human behavior. An example would be examining marriage systems by examining the ecological context, mate preferences, the distribution of particular characteristics within the population, and so forth.

Conditional strategies

Human behavioral ecologists assume that what might be the most adaptive strategy in one environment might not be the most adaptive strategy in another environment. Conditional strategies, therefore, can be represented in the following statement:

In environmental context X, engage in adaptive strategy A.
In environmental context Y, engage in adaptive strategy B.

The phenotypic gambit

The phenotypic gambit refers to the assumption that humans possess a high amount of phenotypic plasticity

Phenotypic plasticity

Phenotypic plasticity is the ability of an organism to change its phenotype in response to changes in the environment. Such plasticity in some cases expresses as several highly morphologically distinct results; in other cases, a continuous norm of reaction describes the functional interrelationship...

. Human behavioral ecologists attempt to control for culture, genetic variation, human cognition, and human phylogeny

Human evolution

Human evolution refers to the evolutionary history of the genus Homo, including the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species and as a unique category of hominids and mammals...

. It's not that human behavioral ecologists think that these concepts are irrelevant. It's simply that the primary focus of HBE is to discover correlations between variations of ecological contexts and variations of human behavior.

Modeling

Theoretical models that human behavioral ecologists employ include, but are not limited to:

Optimal foraging theory
Optimal foraging theory
Optimal foraging theory is an idea in ecology based on the study of foraging behaviour and states that organisms forage in such a way as to maximize their net energy intake per unit time. In other words, they behave in such a way as to find, capture and consume food containing the most calories...

, which states that organisms focus on consuming the most energy while expending the least amount of energy.
Life history theory
Life history theory
Life history theory posits that the schedule and duration of key events in an organism's lifetime are shaped by natural selection to produce the largest possible number of surviving offspring...

, which postulates that many of the physiological traits and behaviors of individuals may be best understood in relation to the key maturational and reproductive characteristics that define the life course.
Sex allocation theory, which predicts that parents should bias their reproductive investments toward the offspring sex generating the greatest fitness return.
The polygyny threshold model
Polygyny threshold model
The polygyny threshold model is an explanation of polygyny, the mating of one male of a species with multiple females. The model shows how females may gain a higher level of biological fitness by mating with a male who already has a mate...

, which suggests that polygyny
Polygyny
Polygyny is a form of marriage in which a man has two or more wives at the same time. In countries where the practice is illegal, the man is referred to as a bigamist or a polygamist...

is driven by female choice of mates who control more resources relative to other potential mates in the population.

External links

Behavioral Ecology Blog
The Human Behavioral Ecology Bibliography - Maintained by Kermyt G. Anderson

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.