- "Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to examine and explain social behavior in terms of evolution."
Study of the biological basis of social behavior, including how social behaviors have evolved in different species and the ways in which genetic and environmental factors shape social behavior.
Evolutionary Theory: The study of how species evolve and adapt to changes in their environment over time.
Genetics: The study of inheritance and the role of genes in shaping behavior.
Behavioral Ecology: The study of how behavior is shaped by environmental factors such as resource availability, predation, and competition.
Neurobiology: The study of how the nervous system and brain affect behavior.
Ethology: The study of animal behavior in their natural habitat.
Comparative Psychology: The study of behavior in different species, with the goal of understanding the evolutionary roots of behavior.
Cooperative Behavior: The study of how individuals in a group can work together to achieve a common goal.
Sexual Selection: The study of how traits that increase mating success are selected over time.
Altruism: The study of how individuals can act in ways that benefit others at their own cost.
Aggression: The study of how individuals use aggression to solve conflicts within a group.
Communication: The study of how individuals send and receive signals to convey information.
Social Structure: The study of how individuals are organized into social groups, such as families, communities, and societies.
Parental Care: The study of how parents care for their offspring, and how this care affects offspring survival and reproductive success.
Evolutionary Psychology: The study of how the brain and behavior have evolved to help individuals adapt to their environment.
Ecological Niches: The study of how individuals occupy their ecological niche, or role, in their environment.
Biogeography: The study of how species are distributed across geographic space and how this distribution affects their behavior.
Human Evolution: The study of how human behavior has been shaped by our evolutionary history.
Cultural Evolution: The study of how culture evolves over time, and how this evolution affects behavior.
Group Selection: The study of how groups, rather than individuals, are selected over time, and how this selection affects behavior.
Societal Evolution: The study of how societies evolve over time, and how this evolution affects behavior.
Behavioral ecology: The study of how animal behavior is influenced by ecological factors, such as competition for resources, predator-prey relationships, and mating systems.
Evolutionary psychology: The study of how human behavior and cognition have evolved over time, often using the principles of natural selection and other evolutionary processes.
Ethology: The study of animal behavior in natural settings, including observational studies of animal behavior in the wild and controlled experiments in laboratory settings.
Comparative cognition: The comparison of cognitive abilities across different species, including studies of perception, memory, learning, and reasoning.
Social neuroscience: The study of the neural mechanisms that underlie social behavior and cognition, including studies of brain structure and function in relation to social behavior.
Social psychology: The study of human social behavior and how it is influenced by social norms, cultural differences, and other factors.
Cultural evolution: The study of how cultural behaviors and practices evolve over time, including the role of social learning, imitation, and other cultural transmission mechanisms.
Kin selection and reciprocal altruism: The study of the evolution of cooperative behavior, including how individuals may sacrifice their own reproductive success to increase the success of kin or other group members.
- "It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics."
- "Sociobiology investigates social behaviors such as mating patterns, territorial fights, pack hunting, and the hive society of social insects."
- "It argues that just as selection pressure led to animals evolving useful ways of interacting with the natural environment, so also it led to the genetic evolution of advantageous social behavior."
- "Sociobiology is closely allied to evolutionary anthropology, human behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, and sociology."
- "While the term 'sociobiology' originated at least as early as the 1940s..."
- "...the concept did not gain major recognition until the publication of E. O. Wilson's book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis in 1975."
- "Critics, led by Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould..."
- "...argued that genes played a role in human behavior, but that traits such as aggressiveness could be explained by social environment rather than biology."
- "Sociobiologists responded by pointing to the complex relationship between nature and nurture."
- "The new field quickly became the subject of controversy."
- "The new field quickly became the subject of controversy."
- "Sociobiologists responded by pointing to the complex relationship between nature and nurture."
- "Sociobiology is a field of biology that aims to examine and explain social behavior in terms of evolution."
- "Sociobiology investigates social behaviors such as mating patterns, territorial fights, pack hunting, and the hive society of social insects."
- "It draws from disciplines including psychology, ethology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, and population genetics."
- "It argues that just as selection pressure led to animals evolving useful ways of interacting with the natural environment, so also it led to the genetic evolution of advantageous social behavior."
- "Sociobiology is closely allied to evolutionary anthropology, human behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, and sociology."
- "Critics, led by Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould..."
- "...the concept did not gain major recognition until the publication of E. O. Wilson's book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis in 1975."