with a new Foreward Jeanne Altmann The University of Chicago Press 2001 FROM THE BACK COVER: When it was originally released in 1980, Jeanne Altmann's book transformed the study of maternal primate relationships by focusing on motherhood and infancy within an ecological and sociological context. Available again with a new foreword, Baboon Mothers and Infants is a classic book that has been, in its own right, mother to a generation of influential research and will no doubt provide further inspiration. Jeanne Altmann is professor in the department of ecology and evolutionary biology and faculty associate in the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. FROM THE FOREWORD: The fieldwork for this book about the ecology of motherhood and infancy was conducted during the first few years of our studies of known individuals and at a time when what many later came to view as the "myth of the primate male" held sway in primate research. Yet hints of the "revolution" to come were already in the air, not just in the study of primates but within behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology more broadly. In the years since I wrote this book, we have come to a new understanding of primate societies. Female lives and reproductive careers are now recognized as being at least as important as those of males for understanding primate societies, life history, and behavioral evolution. Motherhood, infancy, and ontogeny are now recognized as topics as essential for evolutionary biology as for human psychology, and a solely reductionistic approach is seen as one that may miss much of what makes most species, including humans, what they are.(For volumes that provide a window into that literature for nonhuman primates, see Fedigan 1982; Wasser 1983; Small 1984,1998; Smuts et al.1987; Pereira and Fairbanks 1993; S. Altmann 1998; Hrdy 1999; Jolly 1999; and Strier 2000.) Baboon Mothers and Infants has several themes, each arising from an evolutionary, behavioral ecology perspective that focuses on the importance of variability and its sources. At the time of the book's first publication, these themes were rare or absent from the primate literature (and, in some cases, from behavioral studies of large vertebrates in general). Each has since blossomed into an important area in its own right. First and foremost is the conviction that, especialIy for species that have highly dependent, altricial young and that are characterized by slow maturation, such as primates, an evolutionary perspective must have a major focus on infants and on those who provide the care for those infants, primarily mothers in most primates and other mammals. Second is the observation that in natural populations of almost all primate species, a mother not only raises her young within a complex social milieu but also within the context and constraint of "making a living" that is, providing the food and other resources both she and her infant require while reducing mortality risks. Moreover, these social and environmental factors provide the opportunities and constraints within which individual differences unfold and contribute to success in some instances and failure in others, on evolutionary and historical time scales and within lifetimes in the present as well... Third is the idea that baboons, like humans, are successful in an amazingly broad range of habitats throughout sub-Saharan Africa at least partially because they are highly adaptable. They exhibit considerable phenotypic plasticity in their behavior, and such abilities are probably just as important on a micro-ecological level-among and within individuals of a group-as among groups and populations. Moreover, this situational contingency of behavior must be at least as important for maternal care as for other aspects of behavior that have more commonly been investigated in an ecological context such as dietary diversity or the size and composition of social groupings. ***************************** CONTENTS Foreword xv Bibliography of Amboseli Baboon Research xxi 1. Introduction 1 2. Baboons and Their Habitat 8 Baboons and Behavioral Research 8 General Natural History 10 The Amboseli Population 10 Alto's Group 15 The Mother-lnfant Study 20 3. Methods 22 Data Processing 28 Glance Rate 29 Sample Sizes 30 4.Demography: Births, Deaths, and Interbirth Intervals 32 Survival of Infants, Juveniles, and Adult Females 32 Interbirth Intervals 40 Summary 40 5. Ecology and Maternal time Budgets 42 Seasonality of Time Budgets 42 Synchrony of Activities within the Group 44 Effects of Infants on Mothers' Feeding Patterns 49 Maternal Time Budgets and Infant Gender 50 Maternal Time Budgets and Infant Maturation 51 A Model of Maternal Feeding Time 52 Weaning Foods 58 Summary 62 6. Social Milieu 64 Sleeping Grove Subgroups 66 Daytime Neighbors 70 Approaches 77 Simple, or Noninteractive, Approaches 77 Interactive Approaches 80 Grooming 89 Dominance Relationships and Agonistic Interactions 94 Spatial Displacements 94 Overt Aggression 99 Distress 99 Infant Handling and Pulling 106 Associated Adult Males 109 Summary and Discussion of Social Relationships 115 Adult Males 115 Adult Females 118 Summary and Discussion of Specific Forms of Interaction 120 7. Maternal care in the Postnatal Period 125 Parturition 125 The Neonatal Period 127 Maternal Style 130 8. Infant Development and Mother-Infant Spatial Relationships 137 Physical Maturation 137 Mother-lnfant Contact Time 143 Infants' Use of Space 145 Spatial Relations: Dynamics 149 Infant Contact as a Contingent Behavior 156 Summary and Discussion 163 9. Weaning and infant Independence 168 Transportation 169 Nutrition 170 Disease and Ectoparasites 172 Protection from Predation 174 "Weaning": Maternal Punishment and Infant Distress 175 Summary of Weaning and Gradual Independence 177 Evolutionary Models of Parental Investment and Parent-Offspring Conflict 178 10. Conclusions and Speculations 187 Maternal Care and the Infant's First Few Months of Life 187 The Period of Semi-lndependence 189 Demographic Influences 190 Future Research 192 Appendix 1. Maternal Genealogies in Alto's Group 195 Appendix 2. Selective Case History Descriptions of All Mother-lnfant Dyads with Emphasis on Adult Male and Kin Associations 203 Appendix 3. Selective Case History Descriptions of All Adult Males 210 Appendix 4. Behaviors Recorded in This Study and Analyzed in the Text 215 Appendix 5. Residuals from Linear Regression of Daily Time Infants Spent in Contact with Their Mothers at Each Age 219 References 225 Index 237 WHERE TO ORDER: University of Chicago Press 1427 East 60th Street Chicago, IL 60637-2954 Telephone: (773) 568-1550 Fax: (773) 702-9756 Web site: www.press.uchicago.edu Price: $17.00(paperback) ISBN: 0-226-01607-2
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