부산대학교 도서관

Primate behavioral ecology is a subfield of primatology that employs evolutionary and ecological approaches to investigate the behavior of living primates. The approach is predicated on the assumption that behavioral traits, similar to morphological and physiological traits, are shaped by evolutionary selection pressures because of the differential fitness benefits they confer on individuals. Many features of primate social organization can be explained by the resulting behavioral strategies, which differ for females and males because of the sex differences in reproductive potential. New challenges include identifying facultative responses to the altered ecological and demographic conditions under which many primates now live and incorporating intraspecific behavioral variation into predictive, phylogenetically controlled models of social evolution.