Survival Strategies: Cooperation and Conflict in Animal Societies

American Zoologist, Dec 1998 by Brown, William D, Keller, Laurent

Survival Strategies: Cooperation and Conflict in Animal Societies. RAGHAVENDRA GADAGKAR. Harvard University Press, 1997, 196 pages. (ISBN 0-67417055-5, $22.00.) This is a book about animal social behavior for the curious amateur, for the teacher who would like a clearly presented introduction to the basic principles of sociobiology complete with a wide range of examples, and especially for the pre-biologist-the interested student eager to explore the hidden lives of wildlife, ranging from the solitary habits of mosquitoes to the cooperative prides of lions. Gadagkar's writing is lively and personal. the reading is effortless.

The book is written in ten chapters. The first two chapters introduce the basic concepts, beginning with the distinctions between solitary and social animals, the evolutionary problem of sociality via altruism, and the basic precepts of evolutionary approaches to behavior. All this is approached by first illustrating the issues with interesting descriptions of behavior, ranging from infanticide in hanuman langur monkeys to son-killing intracellular parasites, among just some of the fascinating examples. Gadagkar uses this approach throughout the book; he first sets up the problem by describing marvelous examples of animal behavior, then he explains how biologists theorize solutions to the problem, and finally he tops this off with fresh examples that provide independent support for the ideas. The result is that biological problems are encountered and solved in the way the biologists actually approach them, and never as a dry, abstract theorem removed from the real world.

The middle part of the book, chapters 3 through 6, develops the major concepts of sociobiology, explaining that animal behavior, like the shape and color of animal bodies, is amenable to natural selection owing to underlying genetic influences. It then describes the four most basic forms of social interaction altruism, cooperation, selfishness and spite-followed by the concepts of inclusive fitness and reciprocal altruism, again with exciting examples such as blood-sharing in vampire bats and suicide in cellular slime molds.

The following four chapters further develop the theoretical concepts presented in the first part of the book while simultaneously taking on a more personal flavor. Chapter 7 deals with Gadagkar's favorite group of animals, the paper wasps. The section gives insights into the methods of a working insect behaviorist as well as giving the best demonstration of the application of theory to real, functioning animal societies. Chapters 8 and 9 discuss game theoretic approaches and the causes of conflict within normally cooperative groups.

The highlights of the book are the taxonomic breadth of the examples-the lives of mosquitoes are compared to those of tigers and the lives of lions to those of bees-the personal accounts of observing intimate details of the social relationships of an extended family of wasps, and especially the heavy use of supporting examples from Asia. This gives a refreshing contrast to the usual American and European biases found in most similar books of this nature. We have few complaints about the book. There are a few inaccuracies; for example, the mechanism of cricket singing (crickets sing by rubbing their forewings together, not their legs). The main title, Survival Strategies, conjures visions of defensive armor, distasteful poisons, and matching background colors in order to avoid being killed, but these are not really the issues at stake here. It's a book about how animals get along with each other; why they cooperate and why they sometimes fight and compete despite being parts of the same social group. For sure, the substance of the book is more accurately portrayed by the subtitle, Cooperation and Conflict in Animal Societies.

The last chapter finally switches from what we study about animal behavior to how we study it. Gadagkar essentially makes two points about the pathway by which sociobiology should proceed. The first is that, although simplifying assumptions about the process of evolution and the mechanisms of behavior have been an absolute necessity in the development of sociobiology, explicit analyses of these assumptions will almost certainly provide fruitful insight into our future understanding of the evolution of behavior. The second point is a note of caution that the molecular revolution in evolutionary biology shouldn't come at the expense of basic documentation and experimentation on lives of fully functioning organisms. The theories suitable for explaining this variation are young; most developed within the last few decades and we've only begun to tap into this diversity. This book will be an entertaining read for all the non-specialists interested in a vivid and up-to-date account of the evolution and dynamics of social life in animals. WILLIAM D. BROWN AND LAURENT KELLER Institut de Zoologie et d'Ecologie Animale, Batiment de Biologie Universite de Lausanne 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland E-mail: William.Brown@izea.unil.ch