Behavioural ecology’s ethological roots

Bolduc, Jean-Sébastien

doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2012.02.003

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Second, I argue that tracking technology is transforming how decisions are made about collecting, processing, analysing and interpreting movement data. Animal ecology has long drawn on theoretical elements from other disciplines, especially economics models and evolutionary theories (Bolduc, 2012;Grüne-Yanoff, 2016;Stuhrmann, 2022). Tracking technology has led to new sorts of interdisciplinarity emerging for animal ecologists, leading them to engage with new disciplines and in more intensive collaborations.…”

Section: Transformations In Animal Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

How tracking technology is transforming animal ecology: epistemic values, interdisciplinarity, and technology-driven scientific change

Trappes

2023

Synthese

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Tracking technology has been heralded as transformative for animal ecology. In this paper I examine what changes are taking place, showing how current animal movement research is a field ripe for philosophical investigation. I focus first on how the devices alter the limitations and biases of traditional field observation, making observation of animal movement and behaviour possible in more detail, for more varied species, and under a broader variety of conditions, as well as restricting the influence of human presence and observer bias. I reconstruct these as shifts in scope, objectivity, accuracy and fruitfulness. The second transformation is slightly less obvious but equally significant for animal ecology. Tracking devices generate complex data that demands both statistical and biological expertise, which has led to increasingly frequent and intensive collaborations between statisticians and biologists. Based on interviews, I examine how researchers in these interdisciplinary collaborations negotiate the collection, analysis and interpretation of movement data, integrating research interests, methodological constraints, previous field observations, and background theory. Tracking technology is therefore also shifting which disciplinary considerations are brought to bear on research into animal movement and behaviour and how this research is conducted.

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Section: Transformations In Animal Ecologymentioning

confidence: 99%

How tracking technology is transforming animal ecology: epistemic values, interdisciplinarity, and technology-driven scientific change

Trappes

2023

Synthese

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“…The transformation in some areas has been so profound that one might think that the animal behavior studies currently being conducted have no relation to the ethology of Lorenz and Tinbergen, but, in reality, this is not the case. There is a clear continuity between the work of the early ethologists and that of modern ethologists (e.g., Burkhardt, 2005;Bolduc, 2012). The focus on the behavior of intact animals in their natural environment, the breadth of topics and approaches, and the integration of studies on ultimate and proximate causes of behavior are key elements of that continuity.…”

Section: Ethology: the Old And The Newmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…He compared ethology to a growing coral colony, noting that younger ethologists were similar to branches "losing contact with their foundation" and "producing quite a lot of rubble" (Lorenz, 1981, p. xi). Students are often uninterested in the history of their disciplines, but history matters, especially in the field of animal behavior studies (Burkhardt, 2005;Bolduc, 2012;Burghardt, 2012;Stuhrmann, 2022). As Burghardt (2020) rightly points out, "we lose important perspectives if we ignore our predecessors" (p. 241).…”

Section: History Mattersmentioning

confidence: 99%

50 years of the Nobel Prize to Lorenz, Tinbergen, and von Frisch: integrating behavioral function into an ethology for the 21st century

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2023

Front. Ethol.

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The 50th anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Konrad Lorenz, Niko Tinbergen, and Karl von Frisch, arguably one of the most significant events in the history of ethology, has gone virtually unnoticed. Students and newcomers to the field may be wrongly led to believe that ethology has lost its prominent role as the leading discipline at the forefront of studies of animal behavior with a biological foundation. However, the decline of ethology is more apparent than real, in part a consequence of tying the discipline to a particular theoretical approach (i.e., that of classical ethology), but also due to the historical amnesia affecting many areas of science and the uneasy relationship of ethology with some of its own subdisciplines. Behavioral ecology emerged in the 1970s as an ethological subdiscipline devoted to the study of behavioral function, one of the four aims of ethology famously identified by Tinbergen. Behavioral ecology became extremely popular, but was criticized due to its narrow focus on behavioral function. With the new millennium came a return to a more balanced approach to the study of animal behavior, with frequent calls to recover the balance between the different areas of study and the integrative spirit that many consider one of the most distinctive features of ethology. Still, some behavioral ecologists contend that ethology disappeared shortly after Lorenz, Tinbergen, and von Frisch’s Nobel Prize award and has been replaced by behavioral ecology, and offer revisionist narratives of the aims and scope of both disciplines in support of this contention. Contrary to this view, modern ethology remains a necessary and coherent endeavor that encompasses and subsumes all four of Tinbergen’s aims, including those considered to be part of the agenda of behavioral ecology. The challenge for the next 50 years will be to preserve the ethological legacy of pursuing the four aims and their integration across levels of biological organization, taxa, methodologies, and interdisciplinary boundaries for a complete understanding of animal behavior.

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“…Variation within a population has long been of interest for its role in evolution (Grene, 1974;Mayr, 2006;Sober, 2006). For instance, intraspecific variation is central to game theoretic models of the evolution of behavioural strategies, models which were instrumental in founding the discipline of behavioural ecology (Bolduc, 2012;Davies et al, 2012). In the past two decades, however, behavioural ecologists have paid increasing attention to variation in naturally occurring populations.…”

Section: Individual Differencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual differences, uniqueness, and individuality in behavioural ecology

Trappes

2022

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science

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Behavioural ecology’s ethological roots

Cited by 7 publications

References 35 publications

How tracking technology is transforming animal ecology: epistemic values, interdisciplinarity, and technology-driven scientific change

How tracking technology is transforming animal ecology: epistemic values, interdisciplinarity, and technology-driven scientific change

50 years of the Nobel Prize to Lorenz, Tinbergen, and von Frisch: integrating behavioral function into an ethology for the 21st century

Individual differences, uniqueness, and individuality in behavioural ecology

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