The past and the future of Behavioral Ecology

Manfred Milinski

Behavioral Ecology, 2014, vol. 25, issue 4, 680-684

Abstract: The design of brains, sense organs, or immune systems is an impressive product of natural selection, far ahead of human engineering capability. But what if behavior is less well adapted? A bird’s perfect eye is useless if it fails to avoid a stalking cat. If we fail in choosing a partner with complementary immunogenes, our ability to detect major histocompatibility complex–dependent body odors is worthless. Besides being able to detect all available prey items, the diet that maximizes net energy gain must be chosen. Individuals that are selected naturally will be those best able to avoid predators, choose mates, select food, and so on. Those with less perfect behavior produce fewer offspring, and their genotypes will disappear. Ecology is the stage on which the fittest have behaved most successfully. Thus, their strategies prevail today. Behavioral ecology is about the optimal design of behavior.

Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/aru079 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:25:y:2014:i:4:p:680-684.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().