Thursday, December 28, 2017

What Is "Behavioral Ecology"?: A White Paper (by Clara B. Jones, 12/28/2017)

What Is "Behavioral Ecology"? A White Paper (by Clara B. Jones, 12/28/2017) 

Definition of Behavioral Ecology: Variations in behavior relative to ecological [economic] factors, in particular, spatial & temporal dispersion [distribution & abundance] of limiting resources; Ways in which Dispersion [Distribution & Abundance in Time & Space] of organisms "maps" onto Dispersion of limiting resources [in T & S in a given population]--the [John Hurrel] Crook-ian Model of Behavioral Ecology [Behaviour Supplement X, 1964]...limited by energetics x sex [on average & ceteris paribus]--males expected to be Time-Minimizers, females expected to be Energy-Maximizers

FIRST PRINCIPLES OF BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY:: E[nergy]: Acquisition->Consumption->Allocation====> Worker &/or Reproductive &/or Dependent...(Males, T[ime] Minimizers; Females, E[nergy] Maximizers)

The organizing principle of this White Paper is that "Behavioral Ecology" is a sub-field of Ecology, not a sub-field of Animal Behavior, Comparative Psychology, Ethology, or Anthropology.

As such, Behavioral Ecologists will study behavioral, including, social*, traits as they operate/function at population, community, and ecosystem levels, incorporating concerns for scale, mechanisms, development, tradeoffs, mediating factors, and filtering, among other related issues.

Students of Behavioral Ecology will demonstrate an awareness of the roots of their field, including, but, not limited to, the early work of John Eisenberg, John Hurrell Crook, Stephen Emlen, Jack Bradbury, and Sandy Vehrencamp.

Many of the traits of interest to Behavioral Ecologists will be genetically correlated; thus, genetic and genomic studies will be employed to identify genes, gene complexes, and/or circuits underlying behavioral, including, social*, traits--relative to abiotic and biotic environmental factors and interactions.

The journal, Behavioral Ecology, will be viewed as an Ecology journal on par with the journals, Functional Ecology, Journal of Animal Ecology, Ecology and Evolution, and Journal of Applied Animal Ecology.

Behavioral Ecology will reflect the intimate links between Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EcoEvo)**.

Behavioral Ecology will become a predictive discipline, not only a project of descriptive work. As such, a truly predictive Behavioral Ecology will be a hypothetico-deductive enterprise based on First Principles.

Like its parent discipline, Ecology, Behavioral Ecology methodology will incorporate modeling and simulation, as well as, field and laboratory experiments and will investigate tradeoffs and alternative hypotheses. Practitioners can conduct experiments with agent-based [individual-based] methods.

Behavioral Ecologists will be trained by Ecologists and Evolutionary Biologists (EcoEvo) from Departments of Ecology and Evolution and, in addition, will study Ethology, Animal Behavior, & Population Genetics.

Behavioral Ecology will be characterized by strong theory, and students will be trained in quantitative methods, at minimum, statistics, biostatistics, coding, calculus, agent-based [individual-based] modeling. Higher-order quantitative skills might incorporate Fisher's Fundamental Equation, the Price Equation, inclusive fitness ("kin selection") & Hamilton's Rule, as well as, the Nash Equilibrium. As in other sub-fields of Ecology, theory will take the form of Mathematics, though verbal formulations will often be a preliminary step. Marshall's book, Social Evolution and Inclusive-Fitness Theory, might be incorporated into any graduate student's program:

https://www.amazon.com/Social-Evolution-Inclusive-Fitness-Theory/dp/0691161569/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=james+marshall+social+biology&qid=1558917758&s=books&sr=1-1-catcorr

The practitioner of Behavioral Ecology will study virtually any topic investigated by other Ecologists. A good exercise is to peruse the contents of the journals mentioned above, interpolating and/or reframing most any paper into a study of Behavioral Ecology, including, Social* Biology. Once the practitioner gets the knack of doing this, s/he/they can advance to other topics generated by books such as The Princeton Guide To Ecology or any good Ecology textbook. In 2013, the British Ecological Society identified "100 fundamental questions in Ecology" that can be re-framed as questions for research in Behavioral Ecology and Social Biology: https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1365-2745.12025

Behavioral Ecology will include a new sub-field, Applied Behavioral Ecology, that may be of particular interest to students of Human Behavior and Conservation Biology.***

Behavioral Ecology will embrace a new sub-field, Behavioral MacroEcology, that will, in part, investigate ecosystem, regional, and global patterns of diversity in Behavioral Ecological factors and traits (including Sociobiological* factors and traits) and that may require assembly of large databases (as per a new sub-field, Computational Behavioral Ecology).

Behavioral Ecology will be an active special interest group of ESA****.

*Group-formation, Group-maintenance, Group-living, Intraspecific/Interspecific interactions, Cooperative and/or Altruistic traits, Facilitation, and Co-existence. Intraindividual traits ["behavioral syndromes"] will be studied as they may influence group and/or population effects.

**"...tending, in the course of generations, to modify organic structures in accordance with external circumstances, as food, the nature of the habitat, and the meteoric agencies...." Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 1861 (3rd Edition)

***See, for example, Palkovacs EP, Moritsch MM, Contolini GM, Pelletier F (2018) Ecology of harvest-driven trait changes and implications for ecosystem management. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 16(1): 20-28, doi: 10.1002/fee.1743

****An organism's use of energy (E) is the essence of Behavioral ECOLOGY [1st Principles of Ecology= Acquisition, Consumption, Allocation (e.g., to Behavior]. Similarly, a group-living organism's use of energy (E) is the essence of Social Biology [a sub-field of Behavioral ECOLOGY]. All Behaviors [action patterns, motor patterns] are a function of the laws of thermodynamics.

Primary CitationJohn Hurrel Crook, Behaviour. Supplement No. 10, The Evolution of Social Organisation and Visual Communication in the Weaver Birds (Ploceine) (1964)