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Update TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution Vol.21 No.3 March 2006118
their knowledge of avian ecology. It might be that theincrease in corvids during the 1960s was related to a shiftin the interests of children from egg collecting totelevisions, motorcycles and the like. But to say that thisshift has resulted in a more aesthetic appreciation ofurban wildlife, as the authors contend, is a bit of a stretch,especially when the study that they cite reports that, bythe 1970s, the interest of schoolchildren in the naturalworld had rapidly declined and their ability to identifywildlife species ‘could hardly be poorer’ [4].
Aldo Leopold described the enjoyment of nature as aprogression that begins at the lowest level with a purelyutilitarian approach, perhaps involving hunting or fish-ing, and culminates at the highest level with a profoundappreciation for the beauty and wonder of the naturalworld [6]. Are the grandchildren of the egg collectors reallyoperating at this high level? Or is it possible that theymight more closely resemble the schoolchildren in a recentstudy who could identify nearly 80% of images from a setof randomly selected Pokemon characters, or synthetic‘species’, but fewer than half of a group of common wildlifespecies [7]? Or perhaps the child who said he liked to playindoors because that is where the electrical outlets are [8]?
Rather than convincingly arguing that support for theconservation of native species is on the increase amongcity-dwellers or that they have come to highly value urbanbiodiversity, Mehtala and Vuorisalo have provided further
Corresponding author: Hadley, C. ([email protected]).Available online 19 October 2005
www.sciencedirect.com
evidence that a larger segment of human society is moredetached from the non-built environment than everbefore. I believe that these authors are correct, however,in suggesting that solutions to the biodiversity crisis aremore likely to be devised and supported by people whohave long felt an affinity for the natural world, born fromdirect experience with it.
References
1 Mehtala, J. and Vuorisalo, T. (2005) Changing values of urbanbiodiversity: a reply to Miller. Trends Ecol. Evol. 21, doi:10.1016/j.tree.2005.12.001
2 Miller, J.R. (2005) Biodiversity conservation and the extinction ofexperience. Trends Ecol. Evol. 20, 430–434
3 Kellert, S.R. (1996) The Value of Life: Biological Diversity and HumanSociety, Island Press
4 Vuorisalo, T. et al. (2001) Urban biodiversity in local newspapers: ahistorical perspective. Biodiv. Conserv. 10, 1739–1756
5 Vuorisalo, T. et al. (2003) Urban development from an avianperspective: causes of hooded crow (Corvus corone cornix) urbanisationin two Finnish cities. Land. Urb. Plan. 62, 69–87
6 Leopold, A. (1949) A Sand County Almanac, Oxford University Press7 Balmford, A. et al. (2002) Why conservationists should heed Pokemon.
Science 295, 23678 Louv, R. (2005) Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from
Nature-Deficit Disorder, Algonquin Books
0169-5347/$ - see front matter Q 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tree.2005.12.007
Book Reviews
Why we do what we doEvolutionary Psychology: A Beginner’s Guide by Robin Dunbar, Louise Barrett and John Lycett. One World Press, 2005. US$15.95,
pbk (184 pages) ISBN 1851683569
Craig Hadley
Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health, University of Michigan, 1214 S. University, 2nd Floor, Ann Arbor, MI 48104-
2548, USA
Simple explanations that explain vastamounts of variation in human beha-vior across time and space, cogenttheories that unlock nagging questionsabout sex differences and cleverlydesigned studies that test competinghypotheses; these are the things thatmake evolutionary approaches to thestudy of human behavior so interest-ing and rewarding, and they abound in
this pithy ‘beginner’s guide’ to evolutionary psychology.The authors cover a huge range of topics without,thankfully, becoming mired in debates among socialscientists about the proper way to mix evolutionary theoryand the study of human behavior. The standard material,as applied to humans, is all covered here: sex ratio theory,Trivers’ theory of parental investment, the gene’s eye view
of the world, genetic determinism, and fluctuatingasymmetry in mate choice, to name a few. An assortmentof evidence from anthropological field studies and exper-imental psychology is reviewed to support and, morerarely, contest hypotheses drawn from first principles.
Far more novel (if less rigorously studied) however, arethe sections that diverge from standard behavioral ecologyand delve into uniquely human features, such as religion,story-telling and, more generally, the massive amount ofcultural transmission that occurs among humans. Theauthors do a commendable job linking these features tothe uniquely human ability to assess intentionality inothers. Given the importance of Theory of Mind to many oftheir overall arguments, they devote an entire chapter toexplaining the development of this in infants; this chapteralso serves as a nice example of the distinction betweendifferent types of evolutionary questions. The other themeof Evolutionary Psychology: A Beginner’s Guide is thatmany features of human psychology evolved to coordinate
Update TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution Vol.21 No.3 March 2006 119
and facilitate group living and extreme sociality – hardly asurprise for those familiar with Dunbar’s work – andmany aspects of this hypothesis are covered. These twounderlying themes serve as a tool to not only linksomewhat disparate topics throughout the book, but alsoas a means to highlight the far-reaching implications ofour ability to understand intentionality.
It is in the discussion of uniquely human traits whereEvolutionary Psychology begins to show the signs of amaturing field of evolutionary theory as applied tohumans and attempts to stretch behavioral ecologyto accommodate our more unique features. The attentionto these unique aspects of the human species, includinglanguage and large-scale cooperation, is welcomed. Alsonoteworthy are the re-emergence of group-level modelsand the introduction of niche construction theory. Thelatter, which is the idea that ecology influences behaviorand behavior in turn influences ecology, is an interestingand intuitively obvious idea but one that seems difficult tooperationalize. And, similar to the current state of thefield, although multi-level selection theory is promoted,there is a tension throughout Evolutionary Psychologybetween individual-level models and group-level modelsthat is never wholly resolved.
Corresponding author: Taborsky, M. ([email protected]).Available online 14 November 2005
www.sciencedirect.com
The strengths and weaknesses of the book, as well asof the field itself, lie in its interdisciplinary leanings andseemingly limitless range of research topics. Indeed, thetitle seems somehow too narrow given the breadth oftopics and disciplines surveyed. It is clear that theauthors were faced with their own allocation decision,and the outcome of this quality–quantity tradeoffoccasionally robs some areas of depth and, ultimately,results in a variable covering (which might simplyreflect the availability of relevant studies but leads tosome frustration). Some topics are quickly dismissed,such as the interesting idea that language might partlyhave evolved as a sexually selected trait, and others areabsent, such as the work of Gigerenzer and Todd’s groupon ‘simple heuristics.’
But any ‘beginner’s’ book is going to miss some areas,especially in a rapidly growing field, and the authors doexceptionally well what they intended to do: pique thereader’s interest and show that evolutionary theory hastremendous explanatory power, even in a big-headed,prosocial, mind-reading, talking primate.
0169-5347/$ - see front matter Q 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tree.2005.10.005
Of gulls, geese and two menPatterns of Behavior: Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen and the Founding of Ethology by Richard W. Burkhardt Jr. University of
Chicago Press, 2005. US$80.00/US$29.00 £56.00/£20.50 hbk/pbk (xiiC636 pages) ISBN 0226080897/0226080900
Michael Taborsky
University of Bern, Department of Behavioural Ecology, Institute of Zoology, Wohlenstr. 50a, CH-3032 Hinterkappelen, Switzerland
Every other year, up to a thousandanimal behaviour researchers discusstheir results at ‘International Etholo-gical Conferences’, a tradition thatwas begun during the early 1950sby co-workers of the Austrianzoologist Konrad Lorenz and hisDutch colleague, Niko Tinbergen. Thebreadth of themes covered demon-
strates impressively the integrativenature of what is still a young scientific discipline. Aswell as many other annual and biannual meetings, severalscientific journals are also devoted to the study of animalbehaviour and enjoy an ever-increasing popularity.Ethology – a story of progressive successes?
This question pops up repeatedly in RichardBurkhardt’s extensive treatise of the history of ethology.With the 1973 Nobel Prize laureates Konrad Lorenz andNiko Tinbergen as its founders and key actors, the firsthundred years of ethology as a coherent biological scienceunfold before thereader’s eyes.Ethology wasbaptized by the
American zoologist Morton Wheeler in 1902, long before theactors responsible for developing the field took to the stage.He proposed the term ‘ethology’ for the ‘study of animalinstincts, intelligence, habits and habitus’. However, it wasnot until the 1930s that Lorenz’ work on the species-specificaction patterns of birds, and his demonstration thatbehaviour can be used as ‘morphological structures’ toreconstruct phylogenies, gave the field its conceptualfoundations. The comparative aspect marked one of theoriginal hubs of this new biological study of behaviour.Another new aspect was the focus on naturally occurringbehaviour patterns in more or less natural situations.
Burkhardt devoted 25 years to unravelling the social,political, scientific and also the personal situations anddispositions of individual scientists responsible for thedevelopment of the field. He describes, for example, howthe Second World War and its political foundationinfluenced the development of ethology, particularlybecause of Lorenz’ obscure associations with Nazi ideologyearly in the Third Reich. The explanation of postwarreconstruction of ethology as a discipline covers two of the11 chapters of the book, illustrating the importance of‘ethology’s ecologies’ as Burkhardt calls it.
