Behavioural Diversity in Chimpanzees and Bonobos

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Marchant
Keyword(s):  
Behavioural Diversity

scholarly journals Behavioural diversity of bonobo prey preference as a potential cultural trait

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Samuni ◽  
F. Wegdell ◽  
M. Surbeck
Keyword(s):  
Prey Preference ◽  
Home Ranges ◽  
Specific Group ◽  
Group Preference ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Cultural Trait ◽  
Behavioural Phenotypes ◽  
Local Ecology ◽  
Spatial Usage ◽  
Behavioural Diversity

AbstractThe importance of cultural processes to behavioural diversity, especially in our closest living relatives, is central for revealing the evolutionary origins of human culture. Whereas potential cultural traits are extensively investigated in chimpanzees, our other closest living relative, the bonobo, is often overlooked as a candidate model. Further, a prominent critique to many examples of proposed animal cultures is premature exclusions of environmental confounds known to shape behavioural phenotypes. We addressed these gaps by investigating variation in prey preference expression between neighbouring bonobo groups that associate and share largely overlapping home ranges. We find specific group preference for duiker or anomalure hunting that are otherwise unexplained by variation in spatial usage of hunt locations, seasonality or sizes of hunting parties. Our findings demonstrate that group-specific behaviours emerge independently of the local ecology, indicating that hunting techniques in bonobos may be culturally transmitted. We suggest that the tolerant intergroup relations of bonobos offer an ideal context to explore drivers of behavioural phenotypes, the essential investigations for phylogenetic constructs of the evolutionary origins of culture.

scholarly journals Neural Changes Underlying Rapid Fly Song Evolution

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yun Ding ◽  
Joshua L. Lillvis ◽  
Jessica Cande ◽  
Gordon J. Berman ◽  
Benjamin J. Arthur ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Drosophila Melanogaster ◽  
Experimental Approach ◽  
Neural Circuits ◽  
Neural Circuitry ◽  
Courtship Song ◽  
Neural Basis ◽  
Electrophysiological Properties ◽  
Song Types ◽  
Behavioural Diversity

AbstractThe neural basis for behavioural evolution is poorly understood. Functional comparisons of homologous neurons may reveal how neural circuitry contributes to behavioural evolution, but homologous neurons cannot be identified and manipulated in most taxa. Here, we compare the function of homologous courtship song neurons by exporting neurogenetic reagents that label identified neurons in Drosophila melanogaster to D. yakuba. We found a conserved role for a cluster of brain neurons that establish a persistent courtship state. In contrast, a descending neuron with conserved electrophysiological properties drives different song types in each species. Our results suggest that song evolved, in part, due to changes in the neural circuitry downstream of this descending neuron. This experimental approach can be generalized to other neural circuits and therefore provides an experimental framework for studying how the nervous system has evolved to generate behavioural diversity.

scholarly journals Evolutionary accounts of human behavioural diversity

2011 ◽  
Vol 366 (1563) ◽  
pp. 313-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian R. Brown ◽  
Thomas E. Dickins ◽  
Rebecca Sear ◽  
Kevin N. Laland
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Ecological Factors ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Behavioural Ecology ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Theme Issue ◽  
Human Universals ◽  
Introductory Article ◽  
Behavioural Sciences ◽  
Behavioural Diversity

Human beings persist in an extraordinary range of ecological settings, in the process exhibiting enormous behavioural diversity, both within and between populations. People vary in their social, mating and parental behaviour and have diverse and elaborate beliefs, traditions, norms and institutions. The aim of this theme issue is to ask whether, and how, evolutionary theory can help us to understand this diversity. In this introductory article, we provide a background to the debate surrounding how best to understand behavioural diversity using evolutionary models of human behaviour. In particular, we examine how diversity has been viewed by the main subdisciplines within the human evolutionary behavioural sciences, focusing in particular on the human behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution approaches. In addition to differences in focus and methodology, these subdisciplines have traditionally varied in the emphasis placed on human universals, ecological factors and socially learned behaviour, and on how they have addressed the issue of genetic variation. We reaffirm that evolutionary theory provides an essential framework for understanding behavioural diversity within and between human populations, but argue that greater integration between the subfields is critical to developing a satisfactory understanding of diversity.

scholarly journals Behavioural hypervolumes of spider communities predict community performance and disbandment

2016 ◽  
Vol 283 (1844) ◽  
pp. 20161409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan N. Pruitt ◽  
Daniel I. Bolnick ◽  
Andrew Sih ◽  
Nicholas DiRienzo ◽  
Noa Pinter-Wollman
Keyword(s):  
Species Composition ◽  
Trait Diversity ◽  
Spider Communities ◽  
Behavioural Trait ◽  
Community Performance ◽  
Web Building ◽  
Behavioural Diversity ◽  
Trait Space

Trait-based ecology argues that an understanding of the traits of interactors can enhance the predictability of ecological outcomes. We examine here whether the multidimensional behavioural-trait diversity of communities influences community performance and stability in situ . We created experimental communities of web-building spiders, each with an identical species composition. Communities contained one individual of each of five different species. Prior to establishing these communities in the field, we examined three behavioural traits for each individual spider. These behavioural measures allowed us to estimate community-wide behavioural diversity, as inferred by the multidimensional behavioural volume occupied by the entire community. Communities that occupied a larger region of behavioural-trait space (i.e. where spiders differed more from each other behaviourally) gained more mass and were less likely to disband. Thus, there is a community-wide benefit to multidimensional behavioural diversity in this system that might translate to other multispecies assemblages.

Jaguar (Panthera onca) hunting activity: effects of prey distribution and availability

2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (5) ◽  
pp. 563-567 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Carrillo ◽  
Todd K. Fuller ◽  
Joel C. Saenz
Keyword(s):  
Geographic Variation ◽  
Relative Abundance ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Panthera Onca ◽  
Prey Distribution ◽  
Hunting Activity ◽  
Foraging Tactics ◽  
Behavioural Diversity

Geographic variation in behaviour of individuals within a species is well known (Foster & Endler 1999), both across ranges (Iriarte et al. 1990) and locally (Hertz & Huey 1981). For predators, variation in prey use within a given site is often seasonal (Brillhart & Kaufman 1995), and related to changes in relative abundance and/or vulnerability of various prey (Kunkel et al. 2004). Behavioural diversity also occurs because prey behaviours vary and predators change foraging tactics, even on a daily basis (Ropert-Coudert et al. 2002).

Phanerozoic flysch trace fossil diversity—observations based on an Ordovician flysch ichnofauna from the Aroostook–Matapedia Carbonate Belt of northern New Brunswick

1980 ◽  
Vol 17 (9) ◽  
pp. 1259-1270 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. K. Pickerill
Keyword(s):  
New Brunswick ◽  
Deep Sea ◽  
Benthic Communities ◽  
Trace Fossil ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Organic Detritus ◽  
Systematic Effort ◽  
Behavioural Diversity ◽  
Stratigraphic Range ◽  
Sufficient Oxygen

An Ordovician flysch trace fossil assemblage from the Aroostook–Matapedia Carbonate Belt, northern New Brunswick, consists of the following identifiable ichnogenera: Alcyonidiopsis, Asteriacites, Asterosoma, Belorhaphe, Bifasciculus, Buthotrephis, Chondrites, Cochlichnus, Cosmorhaphe, Diplichnites, Fucusopsis, Glockeria, Gyrochorte, Helminthoida, Helminthopsis, Neonereites, Paleodictyon, Planolites, Protopaleodictyon, Scalarituba, Spirodesmos, Spirorhaphe, and Taenidium. The stratigraphic range of six ichnogenera, viz. Glockeria, Gyrochorte, Helminthoida, Spirodesmos, Spirorhaphe, and Taenidium, is, therefore, now extended to rocks of Ordovician age.The diversity exhibited by the assemblage is inconsistent with currently proposed models of Phanerozoic flysch trace fossil diversity. It is suggested that existing models suffer from an inadequacy of sampling and systematic effort per period of geological time, as reflected by the limited number of post-Cambrian/pre-Cretaceous, particularly post-Carboniferous/pre-Cretaceous, adequately documented flysch ichnoassemblages. The assemblage described here clearly illustrates a significant radiation of deep-sea behavioural diversity in the Ordovician. This is possibly related to the development during the Ordovician of a sufficient oxygen concentration and supply of organic detritus in the deep sea or colonization of deeper-water habitats concomitant with the significant diversification of Ordovician shelf benthic communities.

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