Essays in Animal Behaviour: Celebrating 50 Years of Animal Behaviour

Recently, the 50th anniversary of the publication of Animal Behaviour has passed. To mark the occasion, a group of prominent behaviourists have written essays relevant to their fields. These essays provide a glimpse of the study of behaviour looking in all directions. History and future aside, it is imperative to broadcast this information from the perspective of the behaviourists who have helped shape both the past and the future. It is important for any field to be both retrospective and prospective: where have we been, where are we going, where are we now? These essays provide a unique personal reflection on the history of animal behaviour from John Alcock, Stuart and Jeanne Altmann, Steve Arnold, Geoff Parker, and Felicity Huntingford. Six topics are reflected on and include: The History of Animal Behavioural Research, Proximate Mechanisms, Development, Adaptation, and Animal Welfare.

Table of Contents:
1) Introduction 1. 50 years of Animal Behaviour. 2) The history of behavioural research 2. A textbook history of animal behaviour. 3. Behavioural Ecology: natural history as science 4. The transformation of behaviour field studies. 5. Too much natural history, or too little? 6. A history of Animal Behaviour by a partial, ignorant and prejudiced ethologist. . 3) Proximate mechanisms 7. Genes and social behaviour. 8. Control of behavioural strategies for capricious environments. 9. Costing reproduction. 4) Development 10. The promise of behavioural biology. 11. Making a decision by integrating socially and individually acquired information. 12. Behavioural processes affecting development: Tinbergen's fourth question comes of age. 13. The case for developmental ecology. 5) Adaptation 14. Beyond extra-pair paternity: individual constraints, fitness components, and social mating systems 15. Interplay between theory and empiricism in sexual selection. 16. Indirect selection and individual selection in sociobiology: my personal views on theories of social behaviour. 17. Honesty and deception in animal signals. 18. Fifty years of bird song research: a case study in animal behaviour. 19. Avian navigation: from historical to modern concepts. 6) Animal Welfare 20. Behaviour and animal welfare.

About the Author :
Jeffrey R. Lucas works in Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA Leigh Simmons is an ARC Professorial Fellow and Winthrop Professor at the University of Western Australia. He studied at the University of Nottingham where he recieved his PhD in 1987. He has held a research fellowship at the University of Liverpool UK before moving to Australia. His research uses both vertebrates and invertebrates to test the predictions and assumptions of theoretical models of sexual selection and life history evolution. Collectively, these research programs seek to determine the direction and strength of selection acting on male and female reproductive strategies, and on the morphological and life history traits that contribute to fitness, from the whole organism to its gametes. He has published more than 280 papers and articles, authored a book on insect sperm competition, and co-edited a volumes on dung beetle ecology and evolution, and insect mating systems. He has had extensive editorial experience with many journals including Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology, and is a former Executive Editor of Animal Behaviour. He is currently Editor-in Chief of Behavioral Ecology, and has been an Editor of Advances in the Study of Behavior since 2009. He was elected to the Australian Academy in 2009.