EEB 4329 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Philopatry, Richard Wrangham, Folivore
Document Summary
Socioecology- societas (latin) - friendly association with others . Ecology itself is not really an old term. Defined as the comprehensive science of the relationship of the organism and its environment. Environment = abiotic and biotic factors in a community. In many ways an organism creates its own environment. There is a lot of diversity between social organisms, but since there are such striking similarities between clades, there must be similar problems and predicative phylogenies that cause this overlap. Based on the observations of captive baboons, zuckerman in 1932 thought that sexual bonds was the glue for social cohesion. But this was based on a captive situation and on hamadryous baboons. They put in too many males, so there was much aggression, as this particular baboons like harems. In the wild, social groups stayed together even if sexual behavior was seasonal. Discovered in the 70s, female baboons never leave group, where male leave and never come back.