How Giraffes Work

There are few creatures more beautiful, more aloof, and more fascinating than giraffes. Once they were plentiful and filled African landscapes, but in 2016 they were re-classified from “least concern” to “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Their survival in the wild is not assured. Much has been written about their private lives, about their behavior, social biology, and ecology, and their history in art and diplomacy. But so far no book has been written about their private lives, their physiology, and their anatomy and biochemistry—in short, the normal functions of a free-living animal in its natural environment—and it is these aspects of their lives that are the focus of this book. The study of a single species could be concise and relatively simply told. In reality it is not. A species never evolves in isolation from the general biological milieu in which it finds itself. Tectonics, astronomical physics, climate, and purely biological factors affecting food and water resources all shape the path of their evolution and all interact with its morphology, its internal physiological and biochemical systems, and the behavior patterns that regulate its daily life. Giraffes are no exception, as is revealed as the story told here unfolds. How do giraffes work? The answers lie in a story filled not only with the internal workings of a unique creature, but with geography, climate changes of great magnitude, and the labors of extraordinary people who put many pieces of the puzzle together.

When the Value of Cooperating Scales: Collective Intelligence, Information Processing, and the Leadership Meta-Capability

This article explores the nexus where purposeful individual-driven collective action, what is called organizational leadership, interacts with collective intelligence and agency. Based on recent numerical models from complex network theory and empirical studies of collective dynamics in social biology, it describes how intelligent collective agency forms around three order parameters: expectancy alignment, instrumentality inside the collective, and a subjective belief by individual agents in the generalized trustworthiness of other members of a collective. When the value of one or more of these scaling metrics becomes dynamically stable, fractal structures in the collective provide useful information to individuals that informs their choices during interactions including leadership activities. The theory contributes fifteen testable assertions that if supported empirically suggest fruitful ways that new information technology applications could enhance organizational effectiveness.

புறநானூற்றில் உள்ளார்ந்த ஈர்ப்பு

Literature deals with the social biology of humanbeings. Society is made by humanbeings. It faces various evolutions when humans interact with each other. Social psychology explores how human behaviour shaped by family and society. Social Interaction is also one of the Psychological studies. Social Interaction is an intrinsic existence. Intrinsic existence is related to how one likes and differs from one another. In these contexts, the social psychologist has an innate acceptance of Characteristics of the individuals, Characteristics of others, fit between us, Situational influences. Review this article through Purananooru.

Ecology and social biology of the southern three-banded armadillo (Tolypeutes matacus; Cingulata: Chlamyphoridae)

Basic knowledge of species biology and ecology is essential for the assessment of species conservation status and planning for efficient conservation strategies; however, this information is not always readily available. Here we use movement behavior to understand the ecology and social biology of the poorly known southern three-banded armadillo (Tolypeutes matacus). We used VHF and GPS telemetry to monitor 26 individuals from two sites in the Pantanal wetlands of Brazil. We characterized armadillo activity patterns, evaluated the relationship between sex and body mass with home range size and mean daily distance traveled, and examined home and core range overlap. Three-banded armadillos were active on average for 5.5 ± 2.8 h/day, with most of their activity concentrated in the first half of the night. Adult males were heavier and had larger home ranges than adult females. Home range size scaled positively with body mass for males, but not for females. Core ranges for females overlapped little (< 1%) regardless of age, but home ranges for males overlapped both with other males (12%) and females (18%). Our data suggest that three-banded armadillos are mainly a nocturnal species. Home range and spacing patterns point to a generally asocial behavior and a polygynous or promiscuous mating system. We hope that the data generated as a result of this project will contribute to this species’ conservation in Brazil and elsewhere by guiding future management and research efforts.

On the institutional and intellectual division of labor in epigenetics research: A scientometric analysis

While numerous qualitative social scientific analyses of (environmental) epigenetics have been published, we still lack a macro-level, quantitative assessment of the field of epigenetics as a whole. This article is aimed at filling this gap. Mobilizing an extended version of the Web of Science, we constituted a corpus of 199,484 documents (articles, reviews, editorial material, etc.) published between 1991 and 2017 and performed several scientometric analyses to map out the development and structure of the epigenetics field. Three main results were drawn from these investigations. First, contradicting the hope expressed by some social scientists that their disciplines will find solace in epigenetics’ social biology, it is striking that the scientists, journals and institutions that drive most of the research in the field are overall little concerned with social and environmental dimensions of gene expression. Second, and confirming existing qualitative analyses, we find that epigenetics is constituted by diverse networks of scholars, institutions and research specialties that enjoy relative autonomy from each other and approach epigenetics through different thematic interests, from cognitive functions to cancer, to DNA methylation in plants and molecular biology. Third, findings obtained from the bibliographic coupling showed that these different networks became more and more autonomous over the last decade, which suggests that we are currently witnessing the constitution of a scientific archipelago akin to that of behavior genetics (Panofsky, 2014: 33) rather than to a discipline per se. At the same time, this differentiation was less pronounced conceptually speaking, as we also observed a clear standardization of the keywords used in epigenetics articles between 1991 and 2017, with DNA methylation and RNAs serving as rallying signs for different communities of researchers.

Equitable Chick Survival in Three Species of the Non-Migratory Shorebird Despite Species-Specific Sexual Dimorphism of the Young

Sex-biases in populations can have important implications for species’ social biology, population demography and mating systems. It has recently been suggested that in some shorebirds, sex-specific bias in survival of precocial young may occur. This may be driven by variation in the brood sex-ratio and/or the sexual size dimorphism of young birds, which may influence predator escape capacity. Understanding the survival of young birds remains a significant knowledge gap for many taxa, especially when young birds are mobile and cryptic. Our aims were to estimate the sex-ratio variation in three species of Australian resident shorebird, specifically to determine: (1) whether seasonal brood sex-ratio variation at hatching is occurring, (2) the extent of any sex-biased chick survival, (3) if sex specific dimorphism at hatching or during growth occurs; and, (4) whether escape capacity differs between the sexes. We radio-tracked 50 Masked Lapwing Vanellus miles, 42 Red-capped Plover Charadrius ruficapillus and 27 Hooded Plover Thinornis cucullatus chicks from individual broods, examined the likelihood of hatchlings being male or female based on the hatching date within the breeding season, and compared size at hatching, growth and mortality of chicks of different sexes. There was no sex-bias with the hatching date across the breeding season, nor were there differences in survival or growth rates between sexes for any of the three species studied. In one species, male hatchlings had longer tarsi than females, but this did not result in differential escape propensity or improved survival. In conclusion, the hatching date, survival and growth of chicks from three species of resident shorebird was not influenced by their sex.

Boris Tikhonovich Velichkovsky – life in science (to the 95th birthday)

The article presents information about the life and work of Boris Tikhonovich Velichkovsky — a famous scientist, specialist in the field of occupational health in XX-XXI centuries. His scientific interests encompassed all aspects of preserving workers’ health, ranging from comprehensive studies of occupational respiratory diseases, molecular biology and ecology to creation of a new scientific medical discipline — human social biology focused solely on saving the nation and preserving health of working population.

Works citing Bendel and Hua on natural fecundability: a literature review on the origin of a falsified chart used in high school education in Japan

This paper reports the results of a literature review on "An Estimate of the Natural Fecundability Ratio Curve" by Bendel and Hua (1978, Social Biology 25). The estimation of this work was the origin of a falsified chart on women's age-fertility profile that was featured in a high school health education material published in 2015 by the government of Japan. The author searched citation databases and collected 23 works citing the study. A review of the 23 works showed that biases and unreliability of the Bendel-Hua estimation had been pointed repeatedly. The results imply that the chart would be inappropriate for educational use, even if it were not falsified. Both the Japanese government and academics are responsible for the inappropriate chart being used without a comprehensive literature review to insure the reliability of scientific knowledge.

Beyond the Smile

With the expectation that innovation, insight, and discovery will come from researching neglected topics, this chapter explores human instincts, including yawning, laughing, vocal crying, emotional tearing, coughing, nausea and vomiting, itching and scratching, and changes in scleral color. The critical change approach is exploited to analyze recently evolved, uniquely human traits (e.g., human-type laughter and speech, emotional tearing, scleral color cues) and compare them with thir primate antecendents, seeking the specific neurological, glandular, and muscular processes responsible for their genesis. Particular attention is paid to contagious behaviors, with the anticipation that they may reveal the roots of sociality and empathy. Few of these curious behaviors are traditionally considered in the context of facial expression or emotion, but they deserve recognition for what they can contribute to behavioral neuroscience and social biology.