Description
Book SynopsisRobert Trivers is one of the leading figures pioneering the field of sociobiology. For Natural Selection and Social Theory, he has selected eleven of his most influential papers, including several classic papers from the early 1970s on the evolution of reciprocal altruism, parent-offspring conflicts and asymmetry in sexual selection, which helped to establish the centrality of sociobiology, as well as some of his later work on deceit in signalling, sex antagonistic genese, and imprinting. Trivers introduces each paper, setting them in their contemporary context, and critically evaluating them in the light of subsequent work and further developments. The result is a unique portrait of the intellectual development of sociobiology, with valuable insights of interest to evolutionary biology, anthropology, and psychology.
Trade ReviewThis is a good book by a great evolutionary biologist, full of interesting personal narrative and readable and historically important papers on reciprocal altruism, sex ratios, parental investment and sexual selection, and much more. * Animal Behaviour *
One striking feature of Trivers' papers is that most contain very little mathematics, but there is plenty of verbal logic ... the book is suitable for reading in bed with falling asleep over pages of baffling formulae ... interesting stuff. * Animal Behaviour *
Table of ContentsPreface ; 1. Reciprocal altruism ; 2. Parental investment and reproductive success ; 3. The Trivers-Willard effect ; 4. Parent-offspring conflict ; 5. Haplodiploidy and the social insects ; 6. Size and reproductive success in a lizard ; 7. Selecting good genes for daughters ; 8. Self-deception in service of deceit ; 9. Genomic imprinting ; 10. Fluctuating asymmetry and 2nd:4th digit ratio in children
