Lee Alan Dugatkin

Lyudmila Trut

Li︠u︡dmila Nikolaevna Trut

In 1959, biologists Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut set out to speed up thousands of years of evolution into a few decades. They started with a few dozen silver foxes from fox farms in the USSR and attempting to recreate the evolution of wolves into dogs in real time in order to witness the process of domestication. Within a decade the experiments had resulted in puppy-like foxes with floppy ears, piebald spots, and curly tails. Along with these physical changes came genetic and behavioral changes, as well. Dugatkin and Trut examine the adventure, science, politics, and love behind it all.

Visionary Scientists and a Siberian Tale of Jump-Started Evolution

How to Tame a Fox (and Build a Dog)

معادلة الإيثار

In the years after the Revolutionary War, the fledgling republic of America was viewed by many Europeans as a degenerate backwater, populated by subspecies weak and feeble. Chief among these naysayers was the French Count and world-renowned naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon, who wrote that the flora and fauna of America (humans included) were inferior to European specimens. Thomas Jefferson—author of the Declaration of Independence, U.S. president, and ardent naturalist—spent years countering the French conception of American degeneracy. His Notes on Virginia systematically and scientifically dismantled Buffon’s case through a series of tables and equally compelling writing on the nature of his home state. But the book did little to counter the arrogance of the French and hardly satisfied Jefferson’s quest to demonstrate that his young nation was every bit the equal of a well-established Europe. Enter the giant moose. The American moose, which Jefferson claimed was so enormous a European reindeer could walk under it, became the cornerstone of his defense. Convinced that the sight of such a magnificent beast would cause Buffon to revise his claims, Jefferson had the remains of a seven-foot ungulate shipped first class from New Hampshire to Paris. Unfortunately, Buffon died before he could make any revisions to his Histoire Naturelle, but the legend of the moose makes for a fascinating tale about Jefferson’s passion to prove that American nature deserved prestige. In Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose, Lee Alan Dugatkin vividly recreates the origin and evolution of the debates about natural history in America and, in so doing, returns the prize moose to its rightful place in American history.

Natural History in Early America

Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose

Seven Scientists Search for the Origins of Goodness

The Altruism Equation

Ljudmila Trut

«Non esistono condizioni ideali in cui scrivere, studiare, lavorare o riflettere, ma è solo la volontà, la passione e la testardaggine a spingere un uomo a perseguire il proprio progetto» affermò Konrad Lorenz. Nel caso di Ljudmila Trut, a queste caratteristiche potremmo aggiungerne un’altra: «un amore patologico per gli animali». Fu questa la molla che nel 1958 indusse la giovane studentessa dell’Università statale di Mosca ad accettare con entusiasmo la proposta di Dmitrij Beljaev di partecipare al progetto più ambizioso mai tentato nel campo dell’evoluzione e del comportamento animale: trasformare la volpe in cane. Si trattava di replicare, in qualche decennio, l’evoluzione, durata quindicimila anni, che ha portato dal lupo al cane, e senza alcuna manipolazione genetica, ma facendo riprodurre selettivamente, generazione dopo generazione, gli esemplari meno aggressivi nei confronti dell’uomo. Se avesse avuto successo, l’esperimento avrebbe dato risposta a molte domande irrisolte che riguardano la domesticazione, a cominciare da quella che aveva stimolato Beljaev: com’è possibile che un feroce predatore si sia tramutato in un animale da compagnia? L’anno seguente, nello scenario da fiaba di una sperduta località siberiana – e con l’alibi di migliorare la produzione di pellicce, perché gli studi di genetica erano banditi dall’ortodossia sovietica –, ebbe inizio la grande avventura. Un’avventura scientifica tuttora in corso, i cui risultati conducono a riflessioni appassionanti sulla nostra stessa evoluzione, e insieme un’avventura umana fuori del comune, magnificamente raccontata in questo libro.

(e farla diventare un cane)

Come addomesticare una volpe

"Где-то далеко в Сибири живут мохнатые четвероногие создания, вислоухие и приветливо виляющие хвостами. Они не менее дружелюбны и послушны человеку, чем любая комнатная собачка. Но это не собаки, а лисы. Они появились в результате самого удивительного в истории эксперимента по селекции, словно спрессовавшего время, когда эволюционный путь, занявший в природе тысячи веков, был пройден за какие-нибудь шестьдесят лет. В 1959 г. биологи из Академгородка Дмитрий Беляев и Людмила Трут начали работать с несколькими десятками лисиц, содержавшихся на сибирских зверофермах. Лисы относятся к семейству псовых, и ученые хотели воспроизвести в реальном времени ход эволюци от волка к собаке, увидеть, как протекает процесс одомашнивания. Книга «Как приручить лису» — удивительный рассказ об истории этого эксперимента, о повседневной работе ученых и узах, которые вот уже много тысячелетий связывают нас и домашних животных." --Publisher.

Как приручить лису (и превратить в собаку): цибирский эволюционный эксперимент

Here biologist Lee Dugatkin outlines four paths to cooperation shared by humans and other animals: family dynamics, reciprocal transactions (or "tit for tat"), so-called selfish teamwork, and group altruism. He draws on a wealth of examples—from babysitting among mongooses and food sharing among vampire bats to cooperation in Hutterite communities and on kibbutzim—o show not only that cooperation exists throughout the animal kingdom, but how an understanding of the natural history of altruism might foster our own best instincts toward our fellow humans.

The Nature of Cooperation in Animals and Humans

Cheating Monkeys and Citizen Bees

Tucked away in Siberia, there are furry, four-legged creatures with wagging tails and floppy ears that are as docile and friendly as any lapdog. But, despite appearances, these are not dogs—they are foxes. They are the result of the most astonishing experiment in breeding ever undertaken—imagine speeding up thousands of years of evolution into a few decades. In 1959, biologists Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut set out to do just that, by starting with a few dozen silver foxes from fox farms in the USSR and attempting to recreate the evolution of wolves into dogs in real time in order to witness the process of domestication. This is the extraordinary, untold story of this remarkable undertaking. Most accounts of the natural evolution of wolves place it over a span of about 15,000 years, but within a decade, Belyaev and Trut’s fox breeding experiments had resulted in puppy-like foxes with floppy ears, piebald spots, and curly tails. Along with these physical changes came genetic and behavioral changes, as well. The foxes were bred using selection criteria for tameness, and with each generation, they became increasingly interested in human companionship. Trut has been there the whole time, and has been the lead scientist on this work since Belyaev’s death in 1985, and with Lee Dugatkin, biologist and science writer, she tells the story of the adventure, science, politics, and love behind it all. In How to Tame a Fox, Dugatkin and Trut take us inside this path-breaking experiment in the midst of the brutal winters of Siberia to reveal how scientific history is made and continues to be made today. To date, fifty-six generations of foxes have been domesticated, and we continue to learn significant lessons from them about the genetic and behavioral evolution of domesticated animals. How to Tame a Fox offers an incredible tale of scientists at work, while also celebrating the deep attachments that have brought humans and animals together throughout time.

Come addomesticare una volpe (e farla diventare un cane). Scienziati visionari e una fiaba siberiana sull'evoluzione accelerata

Carl T. Bergstrom

EVOLUTION 2E MED UPD EB+IQ REG CR (Second Edition, Media Update)

Hudson Kern Reeve

Game theory has revolutionized the study of animal behavior. The fundamental principle of evolutionary game theory--that the strategy adopted by one individual depends on the strategies exhibited by others--has proven a powerful tool in uncovering the forces shaping otherwise mysterious behaviors. In this volume, the first since 1982 devoted to evolutionary game theory, leading researchers describe applications of the theory to diverse types of behavior, providing an overview of recent discoveries and a synthesis of current research. The volume begins with a clear introduction to game theory and its explanatory scope. This is followed by a series of chapters on the use of game theory to understand a range of behaviors: social foraging, cooperation, animal contests, communication, reproductive skew and nepotism within groups, sibling rivalry, alternative life-histories, habitat selection, trophic-level interactions, learning, and human social behavior. In addition, the volume includes a discussion of the relations among game theory, optimality, and quantitative genetics, and an assessment of the overall utility of game theory to the study of social behavior. Presented in a manner accessible to anyone interested in animal behavior but not necessarily trained in the mathematics of game theory, the book is intended for a wide audience of undergraduates, graduate students, and professional biologists pursuing the evolutionary analysis of animal behavior.

Game Theory and Animal Behavior

"Hermit crabs might not be the first example that comes to mind when thinking about power in animal relationships, but they are representative of the costs, benefits, assessment, and struggles that animal behaviorist Lee Dugatkin explains in Power in the Wild. Besides learning that researchers can evict all crabs from their shells by tickling their abdomens with paintbrushes, readers discover that attacker crabs can assess both the quality of shells and the ability of competitors to hold onto them- and both attacker and attacked make decisions about how much energy to expend holding onto a good shell. If the attacker looks tough, a target might just give up and flee. That the models for these behaviors mirror game theory for nuclear deterrence is all the more interesting. Dugatkin makes clear that this is not a book about what non-human animal power dynamics can teach us about ourselves, but it is an overview of power in the animal world generally- from the costs of pursuing power, to the role of gender (including a description of a species of fish that changes gender depending on its rank), to new findings on observer animals that watch and assess greater community power relationships without participating in power struggles themselves"--

The Subtle and Not-So-Subtle Ways Animals Strive for Control Over Others

Power in the Wild

Principles of Animal Behavior, Second Edition, builds on the first edition’s reputation as a contemporary and forward-looking text with several distinct features: balanced coverage of proximate and ultimate factors, bolstered by a significant expansion of proximate coverage in the new edition thorough coverage of phylogeny and animal behavior has been added to the book’s integrated view of natural selection, learning, and cultural transmission a focus on current research and the process of science through interviews with prominent researchers at the end of every chapter.

Principles of Animal Behavior

In a world supposedly governed by ruthless survival of the fittest, why do we see acts of goodness in both animals and humans? This problem plagued Charles Darwin in the 1850s as he developed his theory of evolution through natural selection. Indeed, Darwin worried that the goodness he observed in nature could be the Achilles heel of his theory. Ever since then, scientists and other thinkers have engaged in a fierce debate about the origins of goodness that has dragged politics, philosophy, and religion into what remains a major question for evolutionary biology. The Altruism Equation traces the history of this debate from Darwin to the present through an extraordinary cast of characters-from the Russian prince Petr Kropotkin, who wanted to base society on altruism, to the brilliant biologist George Price, who fell into poverty and succumbed to suicide as he obsessed over the problem. In a final surprising turn, William Hamilton, the scientist who came up with the equation that reduced altruism to the cold language of natural selection, desperately hoped that his theory did not apply to humans. Hamilton's Rule, which states that relatives are worth helping in direct proportion to their blood relatedness, is as fundamental to evolutionary biology as Newton's laws of motion are to physics. But even today, decades after its formulation, Hamilton's Rule is still hotly debated among those who cannot accept that goodness can be explained by a simple mathematical formula. For the first time, Lee Alan Dugatkin brings to life the people, the issues, and the passions that have surrounded the altruism debate. Readers will be swept along by this fast-paced tale of history, biography, and scientific discovery.

Principles of Animal Behavior, Second Edition, builds on the first edition's reputation as a contemporary and forward-looking text with several distinct features: balanced coverage of proximate and ultimate factors, bolstered by a significant expansion of proximate coverage in the new edition thorough coverage of phylogeny and animal behavior has been added to the book's integrated view of natural selection, learning, and cultural transmission a focus on current research and the process of science through interviews with prominent researchers at the end of every chapter.

Despite the depiction of nature "red in tooth and claw," cooperation is actually widespread in the animal kingdom. Various types of cooperative behaviors have been documented in everything from insects to primates, and in every imaginable ecological scenario. Yet why animals cooperate is still a hotly contested question in literature on evolution and animal behavior. This book examines the history surrounding the study of cooperation, and proceeds to examine the conceptual, theoretical and empirical work on this fascinating subject. Early on, it outlines the four different categories of cooperation -- reciprocal altruism, kinship, group-selected cooperation and byproduct mutualism -- and ties these categories together in a single framework called the Cooperator's Dilemma. Hundreds of studies on cooperation in insects, fish, birds and mammals are reviewed. Cooperation in this wide array of taxa includes, but is not limited to, cooperative hunting, anti-predator behavior, foraging, sexual coalitions, grooming, helpers-at-the nest, territoriality, 'policing' behavior and group thermoregulation. Each example outlined is tied back to the theoretical framework developed early on, whenever the data allows. Future experiments designed to further elucidate a particular type of cooperation are provided throughout the book.

An Evolutionary Perspective

Cooperation among Animals

A biologist and science journalist focuses on imitation as a key evolutionary strategy, revealing "animal education" as a universal phenomena.

Evolution Beyond the Gene

The Imitation Factor

In The Prince of Evolution, Lee Alan Dugatkin introduces the reader to Russian Prince Peter Kropotkin -- one of the world's first international celebrities. In England Kropotkin was known as a brilliant scientist, famous for his work on animal and human cooperation, but Kropotkin's fame in continental Europe centered more on his role as a founder of anarchism. In the United States, he pursued both passions. Tens of thousands of people followed Prince Peter during two speaking tours that took him around America. Kropotkin's path to fame was labyrinthine, with asides in prisons, breathtaking 50,000-mile journeys through Siberia, and banishment from most respectable Western countries of the day. In Russia, he went from being Czar Alexander II's favored teenage page, to a young man enamored with the theory of evolution, to a convicted felon and jail-breaker, eventually being chased halfway around the world by the Russian secret police. While in jail, and while on the run when he was enlightening and entertaining huge crowds, Kropotkin found the energy to write books on a dazzling array of topics: evolution and cooperation, ethics, anarchism, socialism and communism, penal systems, and the coming industrial revolution in the East to name a few. Though seemingly disparate topics, a common thread--Kropotkin's scientific law of mutual aid, which guided the evolution of all life on earth--tied these works together. Kropotkin was not only the first person to clearly demonstrate that cooperation was important among animals, he was the first to forcefully argue that understanding cooperation in animals would shed light on human cooperation, and, indeed might permit science to help save our species from destroying itself. His overarching goal was to understand cooperation in nature, so that he could promote cooperation in humans. Just like in the animals he watched for five years in Siberia, Kropotkin saw human cooperation as ultimately being driven not by government, but by groups of individuals spontaneously uniting to do good, even when they have to pay a cost to help. In The Prince of Evolution, Lee Alan Dugatkin will make the reader stop and take pause to consider what this one remarkable man did to try and make the world a more cooperative place.

Peter Kropotkin's Adventures in Science and Politics

The Prince of Evolution

Evolution presents foundational concepts through a contemporary framework of population genetics and phylogenetics that is enriched by current research and stunning art. In every chapter, new critical thinking questions and expanded end-of-chapter problems emphasizing data interpretation reinforce the Second Edition’s focus on helping students think like evolutionary biologists.

Lee Alan Dugatkin

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