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Cognitive Ecology Comes of AgeAuthor(s): Ken YasukawaCognitive Ecology II by Reuven Dukas; John M. RatcliffeSource: BioScience, Vol. 60, No. 10 (November 2010), pp. 851-852Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological SciencesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/bio.2010.60.10.13 .

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www.biosciencemag.org November 2010 / Vol. 60 No. 10 BioScience 851

Books

to describe the integration o cognitive

science and behavioral ecology, ReuvenDukas (1998) has published an edited

collection, Victoria Healy and JohnBraithwaite (2000) have asked whether

cognitive ecology represents a feld o

substance, Dukas (2004) has publishedthe evolutionary biology o animal cog-nition, and in 2007 the Animal Behav-

ior Society sponsored a symposium,The Evolutionary Ecology o Learning,

Memory, and Inormation Use. Thisvolume, Cognitive Ecology II, is a product

o that 2007 symposium.Dukas, an associate proessor o psy-

chology, neuroscience, and behavior,

and a member o the Animal BehaviorGroup at McMaster University, and

John M. Ratclie, assistant proessor atthe Center or Sound Communication

at the Institute o Biology o the Uni-versity o Southern Denmark, present

a new attempt to analyze the ecologyand evolution o animal cognition.

The books 23 contributors cover themechanisms, ecology, and evolution

o learning, memory, decisionmaking,

and social cognition in a variety oinvertebrate and vertebrate model sys-tems. Contrary to its title, this collec-

tion is not a second edition o the 1998version (Dukas 1998), but is a new

compilation o topics. In this sense, thebook ollows the tradition established

by Krebs and Davies (1997) in theirour editions o Behavioural Ecology:

An Evolutionary Approach.

current eort to map a number o

butterly genomes. These genomicexcursions promise to uncover the

genetic architecture o mimetic patternsin a variety o species and in doing so

uncover the undamental basis o adap-

tation and speciation.Forbes has succeeded in producinga book with a novel perspective on an

ot-visited topic. There is not much inthe biological thread that will be new

to anyone with a current groundingin evolutionary biology, but the his-

torical vignettes and insights into thenaturalists battles to aid the military

machine provide a strong example o

how practical applications come romunlikely subjects. The account o the

postwar eclosion o the ield o ecologi-cal genetics provides a view to the social

inluences that underscore all scientiicinterpretations. To the more general

reader, Dazzled and Deceivedwill provean engrossing narrative o evolutionary

biology as exempliied through the col-ors o animals, a topic that captivated

the ounders o the ield and remains atthe orward edge o genetics, evolution,

and development today.

EDMUND D. BRODIE III

Edmund D. Brodie III (bbrodie@virginia.edu) is director of the Mountain

Lake Biological Station with the Depart-

ment of Biology at the University of

Virginia, in Charlottesville.

Rrc c

Cott HB. 1940. The Adaptive Coloration o Ani-

mals. Oxord University Press.

Forbes P. 2005. The Geckos Foot. Fourth Estate.

Cognitive eCology Comes

of Age

Cognitive Ecology II. Reuven Dukas

and John M. Ratclie, eds. Universityo Chicago Press, 2009. 384 pp., illus.

$40.00 (ISBN 9780226169361 paper).

i

n the 17 years since Les Real (1993)

coined the term cognitive ecology

design, as a photo o two British anti-

aircrat guns so clearly reveals. In animage taken rom the perspective

o an overlying plane, two guns arepresentone with traditional military

green-and-brown blotched camo, the

other painted with countershading pat-terns as directed by the naturalist HughCott. The standard 1940s camo gun

is a clear target, whereas Cotts gun isutterly invisible in the photograph. This

evidence convinced the British militaryto incorporate basic biological prin-

ciples o concealment throughout theiroperations. Critical biological details,

rom the perception o the viewer

(planes photographed targets in blackand white, rendering color camoulage

useless) to the context o the surround-ing environment (camo netting laced

with strips o color was not so eectivein the desert), began to be incorporated

into the military realm.The balance oDazzled and Deceived

ocuses on the genetics and develop-ment o mimetic patterns, as revealed

mostly through work with butterlies.The problems here are huge or evo-

lutionary biologists. How does natu-ral selection build a complex organism

with all its integrated parts through

ixation o random mutations? Butter-ly mimicry has been a classic arena inwhich to tackle this problem precisely

because the gambit is so obvious: Tobe a good mimic o another species

requires many pattern elements o bars,lines, colors, and even wing shapes to

change at once. Moreover, how can thisprocess produce emales that are perect

mimics and males that look nothing othe sort within a single species? These

genetic requirements are seemingly at

odds with our understanding o gradualevolutionary change and genes o smalleect. Forbes takes us through the emer-

gence o E. B. Fords school o ecologicalgenetics and the basement-made but-

terly crosses that eventually began toilluminate the problem o linked-gene

complexes (supergenes), sex-linkedinheritance, and modiier genes. The

answers to the mimicry paradox, pre-liminary as they are still, inorm modern

evolutionary-developmental studies

in all species and have launched the doi:10.1525/bio.2010.60.10.13

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Books

852 BioScience November 2010 / Vol. 60 No. 10 www.biosciencemag.org

The book begins with a brie intro-

duction by the editors, and is thendivided into our parts: (I) learning,

(II) avian cognition, (III) decisionmak-ing, and (IV) cognition and sociality. The

editors conclude with a brie prospectus

on the uture o cognitive ecology. Dukasand Ratclie (2009) deine cognitionas neuronal processes concerned with

the acquisition, retention, and use oinormation (p. 1). Although this dei-

nition will be comortable or cognitivepsychologists, it may seem overly broad

to behavioral ecologists, who mightwonder whether there are any aspects o

behavior that are not cognitive.

Part I has two chapters on learningin insects. Dukas presents a theoretical

overview o mechanistic and unc-tional questions about learning, and

then ocuses on his own model system,

Drosophila. Fahrbach and Dobrin dis-

cuss neural plasticity in the honeybee.The importance o a developmental

perspective is clear as both physiologyand neuroanatomy undergo dramatic

changes. As a behavioral ecologist whostudies birds, I ound these chapters

interesting and inormative.Part II comprises our chapters on

avian cognition. Beecher and Burt

update their 1998 chapter rom Cogni-tive Ecology. Searcy and Nowicki alsoaddress song learning, with an emphasis

on development and stress in a varietyo species. Pravosudov discusses spatial

memory and the hippocampus, witha ocus on nutritional stress and brain

development. Sol asks whether advan-tages such as behavioral lexibility com-

pensate or the expense o producing andmaintaining large brains in birds. These

our chapters provide comprehensive

and readable reviews o song learning,spatial memory, behavioral lexibility,and the eects o developmental stress.

Mate choice and predator-preydecisionmaking are considered in

part III. Ryan, Akre, and Kirkpatrickexamine signaling and decisionmaking

during mate choice in severalinvertebrates and vertebrates rom both

mechanistic and unctional perspec-tives. In contrast, Phelps and Ophir

ocus on the mating strategies o one

species, the monogamous male prairie

Ecology IIwill help extend the bridge

between cognitive science and behav-ioral ecology that is currently still

under construction. I look orward tothe publication o Cognitive EcologyIIIin another 10 years.

KEN YASUKAWA

Ken Yasukawa (yasukawa@beloit.edu)

is a behavioral ecologist and professor of

biology at Beloit College in Wisconsin.

Rrc c

Dukas R, ed. 1998. Cognitive Ecology. University

o Chicago Press.

Healy S, Braithwaite V. 2000. Cognitive ecology:

A feld o substance? Trends in Ecology and

Evolution 15: 2226.

Krebs JR, Davies NB, eds. 1997. Behavioural

Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach. 4th ed.

Blackwell Science.

Real LA. 1993. Toward a cognitive ecology. Trends

in Ecology and Evolution 8: 413417.

eCology of Cities And towns

Ecology of Cities and Towns: A

Comparative Approach by Mark J.

McDonnell, Amy K. Hahs, and JrgenH. Breuste, eds. Cambridge University

Press, 2009. 736 pp., illus. $72.00 (ISBN9780521678339 paper).

somewhere around 3500 BP,humans began to build structures

we now commonly reer to as citiesand towns. Since then, human settle-

ments have evolved into ever larger andmore complex entities eclipsing simple

architecture and emerging as quasibio-

logical entities, complete with their owngrowth patterns and metabolic pro-cesses. As cities have grown to dominate

the global landscape and our knowledgeo ecology has evolved, both the impact

o these structures on the original eco-logical unctioning o the land surace

and the internal unctioning o the cit-ies themselves as specialized ecosystems

have become subjects o interest. Thesetwo perspectives unortunately drive two

vole. Warkentin and Caldwell use signal

detection theory to examine what theycall decisionmaking by the embryo

o the red-eyed tree rog, which mustdecide whether to hatch prematurely

under the threat o predation. Ratclie

considers the coevolution o moths(prey) and bats (predators) rom theperspectives o both parties. These

chapters do a masterul job o walk-ing the reader through a wide variety

o species, topics, approaches, andevolutionary responses, although

I must admit to wondering whethera rog embryo and a moth can be

reasonably considered cognitive.

Part IV provides three consider-ations o sociality. Manser oers a

detailed account o reerential sig-naling in meerkats. Kendal, Coolen,

and Laland discuss explanations orcopying behavior in ish. Federspiel,

Clayton, and Emery advocate an inte-grative 3 Es (ecology, evolution, and

ethology) approach to the study osocial inormation in birds. These

three chapters were inormative andthought provoking. The editors then

provide a brie prospectus to concludethe collection, as they did in the irst

edition oCognitive Ecology.

Dukas and Ratclie have done agood job selecting a representative andinteresting range o topics in cognitive

ecology. Some topics are clearly ol-low-up considerations o material

rom the 1998 version, but manyare not, and some subjects rom the

1998 book are not covered here. Anyreader might quibble about the con-

tent choices, but I can enthusiasticallyrecommend this book or its breadth

o taxa and approaches and its balance

o mechanism, development, unc-tion, and evolution. I intend to assignthis book in my course in animal

behavior, an advanced undergraduateelective or students majoring in biol-

ogy, psychology, and anthropology.As with any compilation, the chapters

vary in style and level o detail, buteach deals with both the theoretical

and empirical, and all attempt toevaluate the current state o knowl-

edge as well as speculate about uture

developments. Perhaps Cognitive doi:10.1525/bio.2010.60.10.14

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