Invited reviewDeconstructing sociality, social evolution and relevant nonapeptide functions
Section snippets
What is sociality?
The term “sociality” has its roots in the fields of animal behavior, behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology, where it is most often used explicitly in reference to grouping behavior. In fact, in his classic review of social behavior, Alexander (1974) succinctly states “Sociality means group-living” (1974, p. 326). This definition persists in the disciplines just listed; for example, Silk (2007) carefully distinguishes sociality from other social categories such as bonds. However, over the
Functional constraints and pleiotropy
As described above, dimensions of sociality that are known to be influenced by the nonapeptides are also dissociable over evolutionary time. The implications of this for the “model systems” approach are truly profound. This is because the model systems modus operandi is to delve deeply into the biology of one or two tractable species and then generalize to others – hence the descriptor “model,” which is defined as a representation of some other person or thing. But if nonapeptides exert
Frontiers
More than 100 papers are currently being published per year on the topic of nonapeptides and social behavior (Goodson and Thompson, 2010), yet large gaps exist in our knowledge of nonapeptide systems, their functions, and their evolution in relation to behavior. For instance, because human experiments rely entirely upon correlational analyses or intranasal peptide delivery, we do not have a window into the functions of endogenous peptide (which would require receptor antagonism or other
Conclusion
Some of the most fascinating aspects of social behavior have evolved many times (e.g., grouping, selective mother-offspring attachments, various mating systems and patterns of parental care), and based on their phylogenetic distributions, some appear to be extremely labile over evolutionary time. Given this evolutionarily lability, a good understanding of the nonapeptide mechanisms of behavior requires that we explore those mechanisms in multiple species that have independently evolved the
Contributor
James L. Goodson, Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA.
Conflict of interest
None declared.
Role of funding source
None declared.
Acknowledgements
I thank Marcy Kingsbury for helpful comments on the manuscript and the authors of Liu et al. (2001) and Turner et al. (2010) for their kind permission to adapt figures.
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