Taking note of Tinbergen, or: the promise of a biology of behaviour

Barrett, Louise; Blumstein, Daniel T.; Clutton‐Brock, T. H.; Kappeler, Peter M.

doi:10.1098/rstb.2012.0352

Cited by 22 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Crucial concepts addressed by such studies include the roles of kinship and inclusive fitness in shaping social interactions, as well as the effects of specific ecological parameters on social structure [8,22]. Such studies have the advantage of documenting patterns of behavior and the associated adaptive consequences in the environments, and under the selective regimes experienced by the study organisms.…”

Section: Ecological and Evolutionary Traditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Only now, 50 years after Tinbergen's seminal 1963 publication [8], efforts to integrate neural, genetic, epigenetic, physiological, ecological, and evolutionary studies of behavior are gaining increased prominence [7,[9][10][11]101], facilitated by multiple factors, including innovative technologies (e.g., high-throughput sequencing [12]), and analytical procedures (e.g., improved statistical methods for modeling and comparative analyses [13]) as well as the increasing ease of application of these advances to field studies (e.g., biotelemetry [14,15]). As a result, it is increasingly possible to address all four of Tinbergen's questions concurrently for the same species [3,7,10,11,16], which is most effective when using modern comparative methods [13].…”

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confidence: 99%

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An evolutionary framework for studying mechanisms of social behavior

Hofmann

Beery

Blumstein³

et al. 2014

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

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172

133

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Social interactions are central to most animals and have a fundamental impact upon the phenotype of an individual. Social behavior (social interactions among conspecifics) represents a central challenge to the integration of the functional and mechanistic bases of complex behavior. Traditionally, studies of proximate and ultimate elements of social behavior have been conducted by distinct groups of researchers, with little communication across perceived disciplinary boundaries. However, recent technological advances, coupled with increased recognition of the substantial variation in mechanisms underlying social interactions, should compel investigators from divergent disciplines to pursue more integrative analyses of social behavior. We propose an integrative conceptual framework intended to guide researchers towards a comprehensive understanding of the evolution and maintenance of mechanisms governing variation in sociality.The study of social behavior in the 21st century All animals interact with conspecifics at some point in their lives. Members of the same species tend to be each other's fiercest competitors and strongest allies, as evidenced by the intense cooperation and conflict that characterize many intraspecific interactions [1]. These interactions are the products of genetic, epigenetic, endocrine, and neural mechanisms that -in conjunction with environmental conditions -affect Darwinian fitness and evolve via natural selection. Building upon Aristotle's four questions, Tinbergen [2] posited that understanding behavior requires the integration of studies of mechanism and function. Only by asking questions both from a proximate perspective (i.e., focusing on causation and development) and an ultimate perspective (i.e., focusing on adaptive value and evolutionary descent) can behavior be fully understood. Social behavior in particular lends itself to such an integrative approach not only because it commands the attention of many disciplines [3] but also because even many behaviors commonly considered nonsocial often occur in a social context (e.g., mating, fighting, parental care). Social behavior is also special because the selective agents are other members of the same species, and this results in intriguing evolutionary dynamics. Nevertheless, in the intervening decades since Tinbergen's

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Section: Ecological and Evolutionary Traditionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

An evolutionary framework for studying mechanisms of social behavior

Hofmann

Beery

Blumstein³

et al. 2014

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

Self Cite

172

133

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Ethological perspectives emphasize the importance of studying the neurobiology of parenting in its natural habitat and of using a behavior-based approach to test parents' brain adaptation to ecological pressures (22). Consistent with findings in other mammals (10), studies on brain-behavior associations in human mothers describe links between mother-infant synchrony and brain activation in the mother's subcortical regions, including the amygdala, nucleus accumebens, and hippocampus (11,13).…”

mentioning

confidence: 92%

Father's brain is sensitive to childcare experiences

Abraham

Hendler

Shapira‐Lichter

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

261

274

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Although contemporary socio-cultural changes dramatically increased fathers' involvement in childrearing, little is known about the brain basis of human fatherhood, its comparability with the maternal brain, and its sensitivity to caregiving experiences. We measured parental brain response to infant stimuli using functional MRI, oxytocin, and parenting behavior in three groups of parents (n = 89) raising their firstborn infant: heterosexual primarycaregiving mothers (PC-Mothers), heterosexual secondary-caregiving fathers (SC-Fathers), and primary-caregiving homosexual fathers (PC-Fathers) rearing infants without maternal involvement. Results revealed that parenting implemented a global "parental caregiving" neural network, mainly consistent across parents, which integrated functioning of two systems: the emotional processing network including subcortical and paralimbic structures associated with vigilance, salience, reward, and motivation, and mentalizing network involving frontopolar-medial-prefrontal and temporo-parietal circuits implicated in social understanding and cognitive empathy. These networks work in concert to imbue infant care with emotional salience, attune with the infant state, and plan adequate parenting. PC-Mothers showed greater activation in emotion processing structures, correlated with oxytocin and parent-infant synchrony, whereas SC-Fathers displayed greater activation in cortical circuits, associated with oxytocin and parenting. PC-Fathers exhibited high amygdala activation similar to PC-Mothers, alongside high activation of superior temporal sulcus (STS) comparable to SC-Fathers, and functional connectivity between amygdala and STS. Among all fathers, time spent in direct childcare was linked with the degree of amygdala-STS connectivity. Findings underscore the common neural basis of maternal and paternal care, chart brain-hormone-behavior pathways that support parenthood, and specify mechanisms of brain malleability with caregiving experiences in human fathers.mothering | parent-infant interaction | alloparental care | transition to parenthood | social brain

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“…By emphasizing the value and necessity of applying such an integrative approach to the study of flexibility in social behaviour, we hope to inspire behavioural and evolutionary biologists to adopt this more integrative perspective themselves [13] and also encourage more dialogue between field and laboratory scientists. The 50th anniversary of Tinbergen's influential publication provides a timely occasion for such encouragement, thanks to the recent methodological progress in genetics, developmental biology, neurobiology and molecular physiology that have made it possible to identify the interdependencies between ultimate and proximate determinants of behaviour in unprecedented detail, as well as a juncture to also acknowledging the influence of Julian Huxley, D'Arcy Thompson and others on Tinbergen's thinking [14].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraints and flexibility in mammalian social behaviour: introduction and synthesis

Kappeler

Barrett

Blumstein

et al. 2013

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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145

112

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This paper introduces a Theme Issue presenting the latest developments in research on the interplay between flexibility and constraint in social behaviour, using comparative datasets, long-term field studies and experimental data from both field and laboratory studies of mammals. We first explain our focus on mammals and outline the main components of their social systems, focusing on variation within- and among-species in numerous aspects of social organization, mating system and social structure. We then review the current state of primarily ultimate explanations of this diversity in social behaviour. We approach the question of how and why the balance between behavioural flexibility and continuity is achieved by discussing the genetic, developmental, ecological and social constraints on hypothetically unlimited behavioural flexibility. We introduce the other contributions to this Theme Issue against this background and conclude that constraints are often crucial to the evolution and expression of behavioural flexibility. In exploring these issues, the enduring relevance of Tinbergen's seminal paper ‘On aims and methods in ethology’, with its advocacy of an integrative, four-pronged approach to studying behaviour becomes apparent: an exceptionally fitting tribute on the 50th anniversary of its publication.

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Taking note of Tinbergen, or: the promise of a biology of behaviour

Cited by 22 publications

References 34 publications

An evolutionary framework for studying mechanisms of social behavior

An evolutionary framework for studying mechanisms of social behavior

Father's brain is sensitive to childcare experiences

Constraints and flexibility in mammalian social behaviour: introduction and synthesis

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