Perception and Motor Control in Birds
Perception and Motor Control in Birds

Author: Mark N.O. Davies

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 364275869X

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Being both broad - perception and motor organization - and narrow - just onegroup of animals - at the same time, this book presents a new unified framework for understanding perceptuomotor organization, stressing the importance of an ecological perspective. Section I reviews recent research on a variety of sensory and perceptual processes in birds, which all involve subtle analyses of the relationships between species' perceptual mechanisms and their ecology and behaviour. Section II describes the variousresearch approaches - behavioural, neurophysiological, anatomical and comparative - all dealing with the common problem of understanding how the activities of large numbers of muscles are coordinated to generate adaptive behaviour. Section III is concerned with a range of approaches to analyzing the links between perceptual and motor processes, through cybernetic modelling, neurophysiological analysis, and behavioural methods.

Symbiosis in Parent-Offspring Interactions
Symbiosis in Parent-Offspring Interactions

Author: Leonard Rosenblum

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-11-11

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1468445650

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As part of the preparation of the materials for this volume, the contributors attended a conference designed to explore the basic concept of symbiosis and its applicability to the study of parents and their offspring. Each participant was asked to focus not on the parental behavior of various species, but on parent and offspring as a symbiotic unit. The presentations were informal and the discussions intense. The chapters that follow were written many months after the conference and reflect the authors' efforts to integrate the comments and criticisms of their colleagues. Out of this amalgam, the present volume was shaped. We wish to thank the National Institute of Mental Health for supporting the conference (Grant MH 36276) and the University of Chicago for hosting it. The editors would also like to acknowledge the contributions of Dr. M. Lewis and Dr. J. Reinisch, who provided additional perspectives on the discussions held at the meeting. Special thanks are due Gary Schwartz for his thoughtful assistance throughout the course of this project. Lu Ann Homza has provided invaluable secretarial help. Leonard A. Rosenblum Howard Moltz vii Contents 1. A Conceptual Framework for the Study of Parent-Young Symbiosis Howard Moltz and Leonard A. Rosenblum 2. Reciprocity and Resource Exchange: A Symbiotic Model of Parent-Offspring Relations 7 Jeffrey R. A lberts and David J. Gubemick 3. The Coordinate Roles of Mother and Young in Establishing and Maintaining Pheromonal Symbiosis in the Rat 45 Howard Moltz and Theresa M.

Perspectives in Ethology
Perspectives in Ethology

Author: P.P.G Bateson

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 1989-01-31

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780306429484

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Nine chapters on diverse topics that include: an analysis of whether sociobiology has killed ethology or revitalized it; aims, limitations, and the future of ethology and comparative ethology; the tyranny of anthropocentrism; psychoimmunology; gender differences in behavior; behavioral development.

Sociobiology
Sociobiology

Author: Edward O. Wilson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 712

ISBN-13: 0674002350

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When this work was first published it started a tumultuous round in the age-old nature versus nurture debate. It shows how research in human genetics and neuroscience has strengthened the case for biological understanding of human nature.

Perspectives in Ethology
Perspectives in Ethology

Author: P. Bateson

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-06-29

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1461575699

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In the early days of ethology, most of the major developments were in the realm of ideas and in the framework in which animal behavior was studied. Much of the evidence was anecdotal, much of the thinking intuitive. As the subject developed, theories had to be tested, language had to become more public than it had been, and quantitative descriptions had to replace the preliminary qualitative accounts. That is the way a science develops; hard headed analysis follows soft-headed synthesis. There are limits, though, to the usefulness of this trend. The requirement to be quantitative can mean that easy measures are chosen at the expense of representing the complexly patterned nature of a phenomenon. All too easily the process of data collec tion becomes a trivial exercise in describing the obvious or the irrelevant. Editors and their referees require authors to maintain high standards of evidence and avoid undue speculation-in short, to maintain professional respectability. In the main, this process is admirable and necessary, but somewhere along the line perspective is lost and a body of knowledge, with all the preconceptions and intellectual baggage that comes with it, becomes formally established. New ideas are treated as though they were subversive agents-as indeed they often are.