Mammal Societies

The book aims to integrate our understanding of mammalian societies into a novel synthesis that is relevant to behavioural ecologists, ecologists, and anthropologists. It adopts a coherent structure that deals initially with the characteristics and strategies of females, before covering those of males, cooperative societies and hominid societies. It reviews our current understanding both of the structure of societies and of the strategies of individuals; it combines coverage of relevant areas of theory with coverage of interspecific comparisons, intraspecific comparisons and experiments; it explores both evolutionary causes of different traits and their ecological consequences; and it integrates research on different groups of mammals with research on primates and humans and attempts to put research on human societies into a broader perspective.

Preface Chapter 1: Social Evolution Chapter 2: Female sociality Chapter 3: Female dispersal and philopatry Chapter 4: Female mating decisions Chapter 5: Maternal care Chapter 6: Social development Chapter 7: Communication Chapter 8: Competition between females Chapter 9: Cooperation between females Chapter 10: Mating systems Chapter 11: Association between males Chapter 12: Male dispersal and its consequences Chapter 13: Reproductive competition among males Chapter 14: Relationships between males in multi-male groups Chapter 15: Males and females Chapter 16: Paternal Care Chapter 17: Cooperative breeding Chapter 18: Sex differences Chapter 19: Hominins and humans Chapter 20: Human behaviour Index