Although the quality of the attachment relationship is often cited as an important determinant of development, the extent of impact of this environmental influence in shaping behavioral outcomes has ...been a matter of considerable debate. This may, in part, be because of the variability in methodologies used for assessing attachment across infancy, childhood, and adolescence, including behavioral, representational, and questionnaire measures of attachment. Previous meta-analyses of the relations between attachment and internalizing and externalizing problems have focused on the behavioral measures of attachment used primarily in infancy. The current meta-analysis is a comprehensive examination of the literature on attachment and behavioral problems in children aged 3-18 years, focusing on the representational and questionnaire measures most commonly used in this age range. When secure attachment was compared with insecure attachment, modest associations with internalizing behavior (165 studies; 48,224 families; d = .58; 95% confidence interval CI .52-.64) were found. Multivariate moderator analyses were used to disentangle the unique influence of each significant univariate moderator more precisely, and results revealed that effect sizes decreased as the child aged, and were larger in studies in which the participants were ethnically White, where the child was the problem informant, and when the internalizing measure was depressive symptoms. Attachment and externalizing behavior were also associated (116 studies; 24,689 families; d = .49; 95% CI 42-.56), and effect sizes were larger in ethnically White samples, and in those where the child was the problem informant. Avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized attachment classifications were associated with internalizing behavior, but only disorganized attachment was associated with externalizing behavior.
Aims
To review the evidence base for classifying compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) as a non‐substance or ‘behavioral’ addiction.
Methods
Data from multiple domains (e.g. epidemiological, ...phenomenological, clinical, biological) are reviewed and considered with respect to data from substance and gambling addictions.
Results
Overlapping features exist between CSB and substance use disorders. Common neurotransmitter systems may contribute to CSB and substance use disorders, and recent neuroimaging studies highlight similarities relating to craving and attentional biases. Similar pharmacological and psychotherapeutic treatments may be applicable to CSB and substance addictions, although considerable gaps in knowledge currently exist.
Conclusions
Despite the growing body of research linking compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) to substance addictions, significant gaps in understanding continue to complicate classification of CSB as an addiction.
When Alfred Kinsey's massive studiesSexual Behavior in the Human MaleandSexual Behavior in the Human Femaleappeared in 1948 and 1953, their detailed data spurred an unprecedented public discussion of ...the nation's sexual practices and ideologies. As they debated what behaviors were normal or average, abnormal or deviant, Cold War Americans also celebrated and scrutinized the state of their nation, relating apparent changes in sexuality to shifts in its political structure, economy, and people.American Sexual Characteremploys the studies and the myriad responses they evoked to examine national debates about sexuality, gender, and Americanness after World War II. Focusing on the mutual construction of postwar ideas about national identity and sexual life, this wide-ranging, shrewd, and lively analysis explores the many uses to which these sex surveys were put at a time of extreme anxiety about sexual behavior and its effects on the nation. Looking at real and perceived changes in masculinity, female sexuality, marriage, and homosexuality, Miriam G. Reumann develops the notion of "American sexual character," sexual patterns and attitudes that were understood to be uniquely American and to reflect contemporary transformations in politics, social life, gender roles, and culture. She considers how apparent shifts in sexual behavior shaped the nation's workplaces, homes, and families, and how these might be linked to racial and class differences.
Intergroup aggression in meerkats Dyble, Mark; Houslay, Thomas M.; Manser, Marta B. ...
Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences,
12/2019, Volume:
286, Issue:
1917
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Violent conflicts between groups have been observed among many species of group livingmammals and can have important fitness consequences,with individuals being injured or killed and with losing ...groups surrendering territory. Here, we explore between-group conflict among meerkats (Suricata suricatta), a highly social and cooperatively breeding mongoose. We show that interactions between meerkat groups are frequently aggressive and sometimes escalate to fighting and lethal violence and that these interactions have consequences for group territories, with losing groups moving to sleeping burrows closer to the centre of their territories following an intergroup interaction and with winning groups moving further away. We find that larger groups and groups with pups are significantly more likely to win contests, but that the location of the contest, adult sex ratio, and mean within-group genetic relatedness do not predict contest outcome. Our results suggest that intergroup competition may be a major selective force among meerkats, reinforcing the success of large groups and increasing the vulnerability of small groups to extinction. The presence of both within-group cooperation and betweengroup hostility in meerkats make them a valuable point of comparison in attempts to understandthe ecological and evolutionary roots of humanwarfare.
Deconstructing sociality Ellis, Samuel; Snyder-Mackler, Noah; Ruiz-Lambides, Angelina ...
Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences,
12/2019, Volume:
286, Issue:
1917
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Manyspecies use social interactions to cope with challenges in their environment and a growing number of studies show that individuals which are wellconnected to their group have higher fitness than ...socially isolated individuals. However, there are many ways to be ‘well-connected’ and it is unclear which aspects of sociality drive fitness benefits. Beingwell-connected can be conceptualized in four main ways: individuals can be socially integrated by engaging in a high rate of social behaviour or having many partners; they can have strong and stable connections to favoured partners; they can indirectly connect to the broader group structure; or directly engage in a high rate of beneficial behaviours, such as grooming. In this study, we use survival models and long-term data in adult female rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to compare the fitness outcomes of multiple measures of social connectedness. Females that maintained strong connections to favoured partners had the highest relative survival probability, as did females well-integrated owing to forming many weak connections. We found no survival benefits to being structurally wellconnected or engaging in high rates of grooming. Being well-connected to favoured partners could provide fitness benefits by, for example, increasing the efficacy of coordinated or mutualistic behaviours.
Social immunity—the collective behavioural defences against pathogens—is considered a crucial evolutionary force for the maintenance of insect societies. It has been described and investigated ...primarily in eusocial insects, but its role in the evolutionary trajectory from parental care to eusociality is little understood. Here, we report on the existence, plasticity, effectiveness and consequences of social pathogen defence in experimental nests of cooperatively breeding ambrosia beetles. After an Aspergillus spore buffer solution or a control buffer solution had been injected in laboratory nests, totipotent adult female workers increased their activity and hygienic behaviours like allogrooming and cannibalism. Such social immune responses had not been described for a non-eusocial, cooperatively breeding insect before. Removal of beetles from Aspergillus-treated nests in a paired experimental design revealed that the hygienic behaviours of beetles significantly reduced pathogen prevalence in the nest. Furthermore, in response to pathogen injections, female helpers delayed dispersal and thus prolonged their cooperative phase within their mother’s nest. Our findings of appropriate social responses to an experimental immune challenge in a cooperatively breeding beetle corroborate the view that social immunity is not an exclusive attribute of eusocial insects, but rather a concomitant and presumably important feature in the evolutionary transitions towards complex social organization.
In order to understand how organisms cope with ongoing changes in environmental variability, it is necessary to consider multiple adaptations to environmental uncertainty on different time scales. ...Conservative bet-hedging (CBH) represents a long-term genotype-level strategy maximizing lineage geometric mean fitness in stochastic environments by decreasing individual fitness variance, despite also lowering arithmetic mean fitness. Meanwhile, variance-prone (aka risk-prone) strategies produce greater variance in shortterm payoffs, because this increases expected arithmetic mean fitness if the relationship between payoffs and fitness is accelerating. Using evolutionary simulation models, we investigate whether selection for such variance-prone strategies is counteracted by selection for bet-hedging that works to adaptively reduce fitness variance. In our model, variance proneness evolves in finegrained environments (lower correlations among individuals in energetic state and/or payoffs), and with larger numbers of independent decision events over which resources accumulate prior to selection. Conversely, multiplicative fitness accumulation, caused by coarser environmental grain and fewer decision events selection, favours CBH via greater variance aversion. We discuss examples of variance-sensitive strategies in optimal foraging, migration, life histories and cooperative breeding using this bet-hedging perspective. By linking disparate fields of research studying adaptations to variable environments, we should be better able to understand effects of human-induced rapid environmental change.
Inclusive fitness theory predicts that parental care will vary with relatedness between potentially caring parents and offspring, potentially shaping mating system evolution. Systems with extra-pair ...paternity (EPP), and hence variable parent–brood relatedness, provide valuable opportunities to test this prediction. However, existing theoretical and empirical studies assume that a focal male is either an offspring’s father with no inbreeding, or is completely unrelated. We highlight that this simple dichotomy does not hold given reproductive interactions among relatives, complicating the effect of EPP on parent–brood relatedness yet providing new opportunities to test inclusive fitness theory. Accordingly, we tested hierarchical hypotheses relating parental feeding rate to parent–brood relatedness, parent kinship and inbreeding, using song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) experiencing natural variation in relatedness. As predicted, male and female feeding rates increased with relatedness to a dependent brood, even controlling for brood size. Male feeding rate tended to decrease as paternity loss increased, and increased with increasing kinship and hence inbreeding between socially pairedmates.We thereby demonstrate that variation in a key component of parental care concurs with subtle predictions from inclusive fitness theory.We additionally highlight that such effects can depend on the underlying social mating system, potentially generating status-specific costs of extra-pair reproduction.
Extreme climatic events (ECEs) are increasing in frequency and intensity and this necessitates understanding their influence on organisms. Animal behaviour may mitigate the effects of ECEs, but field ...studies are rare because ECEs are infrequent and unpredictable. Hurricane Irma made landfall in southwestern Florida where we were monitoring white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus seminolus) with GPS collars. We report on an opportunistic case study of behavioural responses exhibited by a large mammal during an ECE, mitigation strategies for reducing the severity of the ECE effects, and the demographic effect of the ECE based on known-fate of individual animals. Deer altered resource selection by selecting higher elevation pine and hardwood forests and avoiding marshes. Most deer left their home ranges during Hurricane Irma, and the probability of leaving was inversely related to home range area. Movement rates increased the day of the storm, and no mortality was attributed to Hurricane Irma. We suggest deer mobility and refuge habitat allowed deer to behaviourally mitigate the negative effects of the storm, and ultimately, aid in survival. Our work contributes to the small but growing body of literature linking behavioural responses exhibited during ECEs to survival, which cumulatively will provide insight for predictions of a species resilience to ECEs and improve our understanding of how behavioural traits offset the negative impacts of global climate change.
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