Connecting Behavioural Ecology with Human Behaviour in Consumption
Behavioural Ecology - Habitat choice
By JR Krebs and NB Davies and Stuart West Krebs, J. R., & Davies, N. B. (Eds.). (2009). Behavioural ecology: an evolutionary approach. John Wiley & Sons.
‘Behavioural Ecology’ is the study of behaviour of an animal’s struggle to survive and reproduce. The content of the book explains the exploiting and competing of animals for resources, how they avoid predators and how they select mates, and caring for offspring. The purpose of the book shows the behaviour of societies through reflecting both cooperation and conflict among individuals.
The authors explain analytical ideas by using examples of micro-organisms, invertebrates and vertebrates animals. It is formatted to boxed sections for some topics and marginal notes help guide the reader. The book is essential reading for students of behavioural ecology, animal behaviour and evolutionary biology.
Nicholas B. Davies FRS is Professor of Behavioural Ecology in the Department of Zoology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. John R. Krebs FRS is Principal of Jesus College and Professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford, and a member of the House of Lords. Stuart West is Professor of Evolutionary Biology in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford.
Reading Behavioural Ecology afforded me a more complex approach to understanding ecology within the topics of dispersal and social foraging. The concept of dispersal and habitat choice ties into the movement of waste in the urban city. I wanted to develop understandings of behaviour not just from living, breathing animals, but to take their behavioural ecology in the context of human consumption and its aftermath of the waste they leave behind. I read on habitat choice, its relation to dispersal of animals in finding homes showed me that the movements within habitat choices has a major role in spatial and temporal scales; influencing speciation of animals. Relating back to the people living in the urban environment, the habitat choice processes induced the individual to answer an evolutionary question, ‘Do I have all that I need here and now?’ This question deals with space and time, potentially opening up the issue of dispersal. Like the animal dispersing out to find a home, rubbish once belonged to a home with the owner of the product. Now that the packaging is released into the city, its home is in temporary corners or paths on the streets, the space and time of the current urban bustle shifts the movement of the rubbish. The animals need to shift accordingly for instinctive reasons and populate in areas that are safe to build a community within. And like the humans, we also populate within the city for our reasons to live in a safe and healthy environment, therefore, the rubbish that travels with us shows that its trace of habitat choice is influenced with spatial and temporal scales.
This book relates to the first critical review of the book, Urban Code - 100 Lessons for Understanding the City by Anne Mikoleit and Moritz Pürckhauer for the purpose of engaging in urban space to find things that are beyond the realm of subject, but ties back into the issue.
