evolutionary approach to animal and human behaviour, i.e. the adaptive value of a behavioural trait, its historical basis, its costs and benefits in terms of Darwinian fitness. The main topic is the evolution of sexual and social behaviour: male and female roles and strategies, mating systems, parental care, altruism, and finally human sexual behaviour and human family in a socio-biological perspective, the evolution of culture and the role of play behaviour.
J. Alcock, Animal Behaviour. An evolutionary approach (VIII ed), Sinauer Associates, MA [Chapters I, X, XI, XIV, Glossary].
Learning Objectives
a) To frame the diversity of animal behaviour
b) To compare different mind processes, social interactions and mating systems inside an evolutionary background.
c) To evaluate the function of the behaviour in terms of costs, benefits, fitness, coevolution and alternative hypotheses, and with an appropriate terminology.
Prerequisites
None
Teaching Methods
I discuss several study cases on sexual and social behaviour through a comparative approach and I try to set the experiments and the debate on Sexual Selection and Eusociality theories against their historical background.
Further information
Reception of students in the days of lesson
Type of Assessment
written examination (open questions) and oral examination (optional). Individual PowerPoint presentation only for a number (max 24, 6 PPx2 h) of attending students
Course program
Comparative study of animal behaviour and mind processes, in terms of adaptive value and survival: spatial memory, learning, language, consciousness, social mind, play and dreaming. The coevolution and the “Red Queen Hypothesis”. Sexual Selection by Darwin: “ardent males, choosy females”, evolution of sex differences, alternative reproductive strategies and mate selection. Beyond Darwin: sperm competition, promiscuity and cryptic female choice. The adaptive value of social living: costs and benefits, cooperation and altruism, the evolution of eusocial behaviour. The perspective of Sociobiology and Evolutionary Psychology: the adaptive tactics of parents, nuptial systems and mate choice in humans. To play: an useless behaviour? Cultural evolution and non-verbal communication