CAREL P. VAN SCHAIK
Duke University, North Carolina
CHARLES H. JANSON
State University of New York, Stony Brook
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
2000
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Contributors viii
Foreword xi
SARAH B.HRDY
Infanticide by males: prospectus 1
CAREL P.VAN SCHAIK AND CHARLES H. JANSON
Part I. Introduction 7
1 The holy wars about infanticide. Which side are you on? and why? 9
VOLKER SOMMER
2 Infanticide by male primates: the sexual selection hypothesis revisited 27
CAREL P. VAN SCHAIK
3 Vulnerability to infanticide by males: patterns among mammals 61
CAREL P. VAN SCHAIK
Part II Infanticide by males: case studies 73
4 Infanticide in red howlers: female group size, male membership, and a
possible link to folivory 75
CAROLYN M.CROCKETT AND CHARLES H. JANSON
5 Infanticide in hanuman langurs: social organization, male migration, and
weaning age 99
CAROLA BORRIES AND ANDREAS KOENIG
6 Male infanticide and defense of infants in chacma baboons 123
RYNE A. PALOMBIT, DOROTHY L. CHENEY, JULIA FISCHER, SARA JOHNSON, DREW
RENDALL, ROBERT M. SEYFARTH, AND JOAN B. SILK
7 Infanticide by males and female choice in wild Thomas's langurs 153
ROMY STEENBEEK
8 The evolution of infanticide in rodents: a comparative analysis 178
DANTIEL T. BLUMSTEIN
9 Infanticide by male birds 198
JOSE P. VEIGA
Part III Behavioral consequences of infanticide by males 221
10 Prevention of infanticide: the perspective of infant primates 223
ADRIAN TREVES
11 Infanticide and the evolution of male-female bonds in animals 239
RYNE A. PALOMBIT
12 The other side of the coin: infanticide and the evolution of affiliative
male-infant interactions in Old World primates 269
ANDREAS PAUL, SIGNE PREUSCHOFT, AND CAREL P. VAN SCHAIK
13 Female dispersal and infanticide avoidance in primates 293
ELISABETH H. M. STERCK AND AMANDA H. KORSTJENS
14 Reproductive patterns in eutherian mammals: adaptations against
infanticide? 322
MARIA A. VAN NOORDWIJK AND CAREL P. VAN SCHAIK
15 Paternity confusion and the ovarian cycles of female primates 361
CAREL P. VAN SCHAIK, J. KETTH HODGES, AND CHARLES L. NUNN
16 Social evolution in primates: the relative roles of ecology and
intersexual conflict 388
CHARLES L. NUNN AND CAREL P. VAN SCHAIK
Part IV Infanticide by females 421
17 Infanticide by female mammals: implications for the evolution of social
systems 423
LESLIE DIGBY
18 "The hate that love generated" - sexually selected neglect of one's own
offspring in humans 447
ECKART VOLAND AND PETER STEPHAN
Part V Conclusion 467
19 The behavioral ecology of infanticide by males 469
CHARLES H. JANSON AND CAREL P. VAN SCHAIK
References 495
Species Index 555
Subject Index 565
BIOGRAPHY OF AUTHORS
CAREL P. VAN SCHAIK is Professor of Biological Anthropology at Duke
University. His research interests include primate social evolution and
tropical forest ecology and conservation. He has co-edited two books on
conservation and biodiversity.
CHARLES H. JANSON is Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook. His major research interests are
the evolutionary ecology of primate social behavior and the evolution of
seed dispersal. He has recently co-edited Primate Communities (1999) with
John Fleagle and Kaye Reed.
SELECTED EXCERPTS FROM THE FORWARD
"Science does not deal in certainty, so "fact" can only mean a proposition
affirmed to such high degree of certainty that it would be perverse to
withhold one's provisional assent."
(S. J. GOULD, 1999)
"Quite possibly, readers ten years from now may take for granted
the occurrence of infanticide in various animal species," Glenn Hausfater
and I rashly conjectured back in 1984, in a preface to the first book on
this subject, "and [they] may even be unaware of the controversies and
occasionally heated debate that have marked the last decade of research on
this topic. . .". For biologists, that projection turned out to be more or
less accurate. For those with backgrounds in the social sciences, perhaps
especially in my own field of anthropology, it was wildly optimistic.
Most animal behaviorists now take for granted that the killing of
infants by conspecifics can be found throughout the natural world and that,
for many primate species, the arrival in their group of unrelated males
represents a threat to infant survival. Many anthropologists, however,
remain skeptical of the proposition that a propensity to attack infants
born to unfamiliar females evolved in non-human primate males because it
increased their chances to breed. This would require accepting that a
behavior obviously detrimental to the survival of the group or even the
species could evolve in males through Darwinian sexual selection because it
provided the killers with a reproductive edge in their competition with
rival males. To them it reeks of "selfish genes" and would mean that this
extraordinarily destructive behavior is adaptive rather than pathological
or accidental behavior. Those wishing to familiarize themselves with the
various positions in this debate will find a large, discursive,
discouraging literature for the years 1974-1999 reviewed in Volker Sommer's
chapter for this book (Chapter 1).
.................
By taking for granted that infanticide is an evolved behavior,
however, the editors of this volume liberate and even encourage
contributors to explore heretofore neglected questions and to focus on the
evolutionary consequences of infanticide for physiology and group
structure. In what taxonomic groups are we most likely to find
infanticide? And why? What particular demographic features (such as male
migration rates or weaning age) affect the likelihood that infanticide
behavior will evolve or be maintained in a population? The volume's token
rodent expert asks a totally new question: which came first, infanticide by
strange males or "Bruce effects" (the capacity of female rodents to
reabsorb fetuses when they sense the presence of a strange male)? Other
inquire how infanticide has affected male-female relationships in species
such as baboons. And what might it have to tell us about human capacities
to form pair bonds? The title notwithstanding, several chapters deal with
the killing of infants by females, and in doing so highlight thorny issues
raised when Darwin's Theory of sexual selection - originally constructed
with competition among females. This is an excellent case in point
illustrating how, long after a theory has proved itself time and again and
been widely accepted, researchers may still be prompted to adjust or expand
certain key elements to a theory, even one so venerable as sexual
selection. This is an area where much research remains to be done. Just
how female-female competition can be incorporated into the theory of sexual
selection is still problematic, and new theoretical models are needed.
What makes the science in this volume exciting then is that field
observations and other sources of information are combined with carefully
reasoned inference to construct model worlds - sometimes partly imagined
worlds - but models that generate predictions that are already being, or we
hope soon can be, tested in the "real" world of fieldsites, laboratories
and library. In this way we not only summarize the facts at hand, but
rephrase what we already know. Books such as this position us to learn
something new.
Sarah B. Hrdy
Universiy of California - Davis
CONTRIBUTORS
DANIEL T. BLUMSTEIN
Departments of Biology and Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW
2109, Australia
CAROLA BORRIES
Abt. Verhaltensforshung & Okologie, Deutsches Primatenzentrum, Kellnerweg
4, D-37077 Gottingen, Germany
Present address:
Department of Anthropology, State University of New York, Stony Brook,
Stony Brook, NY 11794-4364, USA
DOROTHY L. CHENEY
Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
CAROLINE M. CROCKETT
Regional Primate Research Center, Box 3s7330, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA 98195-7330, USA
LESLIE DIGBY
Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Duke University, Box
90383, Durham, NC z7708-o383
J. KEITH HODGES
Department of Reproductive Biology, Deutsches Primatenzentum, Kellnerweg 4,
D-37077 Gottingen, Germany
SARAH B. HRDY
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA
95616, USA
JULIA FISCHER
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
19104 - 6196, USA
CHARLES H. JANSON
Department of Ecology and Evolution, State University of New York, Stony Brook,
Stony Brook, NY 11794-5245, USA
SARA JOHNSON
Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
87131, USA
ANDREAS KOENIG
Abt. Verhaltensforshung & Okologie, Deutsches Primatenzentrum, Kellnerweg
4, D-37077 Gottingen, Germany
AMANDA H. KORSTJENS
Department of Ethology and Socioecology, Utrecht University, PO Box 80086,
3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands
CHARLES L. NUNN
Department of Biology, University of Virginia, Gilmer Hall,
Charlottesville, VA 22903-2477, USA
RYNE A. PALOMBIT
Department of Anthropology, Center for Human Evolutionary Studies, Rutgers
University, 131 George Street, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ
08901-1414, USA
ANDREAS PAUL
Institut fur Zoologie und Anthropologie, Universitat Gottingen,
Burgerstrasse 50, D-37073 Gottingen, Germany
SIGNE PREUSCHOFT
Living Links, Emory University, Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center,
Field Station, 2409 Taylor Lane, Lawrenceville, GA 30043, USA
DREW RENDALL
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Lethbridge,
Lethbridge, Alberta, T1K 3M4, Canada
ROBERT M. SEYFARTH
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
19104-6196, USA
JOAN B. SILK
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los
Angeles, CA 90095-1553, USA
VOLKER SOMMER
Department of Anthropology, University College London, Gower Street, London
WClE 6BT, UK
ROMY STEENBEEK
Department of Ethology and Socioecology, Utrecht University, PO Box 80086,
3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands
PETER STEPHAN
Bahnstrasse 22, D-06484 Ditfurt, Germany
ELISABETH H. M. STERCK
Department of Ethology and Socioecology, Utrecht University, PO Box 80086,
3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands
ADRIAN TREVES
Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 250 North Mills
Street, Madison, WI 53706, USA
MARIA A. VAN NOORDWIJK
3323 Ridge Road, Durham, NC 27705-5535, USA
CAREL P. VAN SCHAIK
Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy, Duke University, Box
90383, Durham, NC 27708-0383, USA
JOSE P. VEIGA
Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, C.S.I.C. Jose Gutierrez Abascal 2,
28006 Madrid, Spain
ECKART VOLAND
Zentrum fur Philosophie und Grundlagen der Wissenschaft, Universitat
Giessen, Otto-Behaghel Strasse 10C, D-35394, Giessen, Germany
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