Bruce Bagemihl - Biological Exuberance

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See, for example, the numerous contributors to Barlow, C. (1994) Evolution Extended: Biological Debates on the Meaning of Life (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press).

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Wilson, E.O. (1978) On Human Nature, p. 201 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).

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von Bertalanffy, L. (1969) “Chance or Law,” in A. Koestler and R. M. Smithies, eds., Beyond Reductionism (London: Hutchinson); Lewontin, R., and S. J. Gould (1979) “The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B 205:581-98; Hamilton, M. (1984) “Revising Evolutionary Narratives: A Consideration of Evolutionary Assumptions About Sexual Selection and Competition for Mates,” American Anthropologist 86:65162; Levins, R., and R. C. Lewontin (1985) The Dialectical Biologist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press); Rowell, T. (1979) “How Would We Know If Social Organization Were Not Adaptive?” in I. Bernstein and E. Smith, eds., Primate Ecology and Human Origins, pp. 1-22 (New York: Garland). See also the discussion in Ho et al., “A New Paradigm for Evolution,” and in Ho and Saunders, Beyond Neo-Darwinism.

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May, R. (1989) “The Chaotic Rhythms of Life,” New Scientist 124(1691):37-41; Ford quote in Gleick, J. (1987) Chaos: Making a New Science, p. 314 (New York: Viking); Ferrière, R., and G. A. Fox (1995) “Chaos and Evolution,” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10:480-85; Robertson, R., and A. Combs, eds., (1995) Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates); Degn, H., A. V. Holden, and L. F. Olsen, eds., (1987) Chaos in Biological Systems (New York: Plenum Press); see also Abraham, R. (1994) Chaos, Gaia, Eros: A Chaos Pioneer Uncovers the Three Great Streams of History (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco).

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Alados, C. L., J. M. Escos, and J. M. Emlen (1996) “Fractal Structure of Sequential Behavior Patterns: An Indicator of Stress,” Animal Behavior 51:437-43; Cole, B. J. (1995) “Fractal Time in Animal Behavior: The Movement Activity of Drosophila,” Animal Behavior 50:1317-24; Erlandsson, J., and V. Kostylev (1995) “Trail Following, Speed, and Fractal Dimension of Movement in a Marine Prosobranch, Littorina littorea, During a Mating and a Non-Mating Season,” Marine Biology 122:87-94; Sole, R. V., O. Miramontes, and B. C. Goodwin (1993) “Oscillations and Chaos in Ant Societies,” ]ournal of Theoretical Biology 161:343-57; Fourcassie, V., D. Coughlin, and J. F. A. Traniello (1992) “Fractal Analysis of Search Behavior in Ants,” Naturwissenschaften 79:87-89; Camazine, S. (1991) “Self-Organizing Pattern Formation on the Combs of Honey Bee Colonies,” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 28:61-76; Cole, B. J. (1991) “Is Animal Behavior Chaotic? Evidence from the Activity of Ants,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B 244:253-59.

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Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science; Botkin, D. B. (1990) Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century (New York: Oxford University Press).

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Savalli, U. M. (1995) “The Evolution of Bird Coloration and Plumage Elaboration: A Review of Hypotheses,” in D. M. Power, ed., Current Ornithology, vol. 12, pp. 141-90 (New York: Plenum Press).

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For a promising direction of research in this regard, see the proposal that a wide range of animal coat patterns may be generable from a single, simple mathematical equation (based on the work of Alan Turing): Murray, J. D. (1988) “How the Leopard Gets Its Spots,” Scientific American 258(3):80-87.

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Goerner, S. (1995) “Chaos, Evolution, and Deep Ecology,” in Robertson and Combs, Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences, pp. 17-38; Worster, “The Ecology of Chaos and Harmony,” p. 14; Haldane, J. B. S. (1928) Possible Worlds and Other Papers, p. 298 (New York: Harper & Brothers).

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Goerner, “Chaos, Evolution, and Deep Ecology,” p. 24.

100

Lovelock, J. E. (1988) “The Earth as a Living Organism,” in E. O. Wilson, ed., BioDiversity, pp. 486-489 (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press).

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Lovelock, J. E. (1979) Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press); Margulis, L., and D. Sagan (1986) Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution (New York: Summit Books); Bunyard, P., and E. Goldsmith, eds., (1988) Gaia: The Thesis, the Mechanisms, and the Implications, Proceedings of the First Annual Camelford Conference on the Implications of the Gaia Hypothesis (Camelford: Wadebridge Ecological Centre); Lovelock, J. E. (1988) The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth (New York: W. W. Norton and Company); Bunyard and Goldsmith, Gaia and Evolution ; Schneider, S. H., and P. J. Boston, eds., (1991) Scientists on Gaia, Proceedings of the American Geophysical Union’s Annual Chapman Conference (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press); Williams, G. R. (1996) The Molecular Biology of Gaia (New York: Columbia University Press).

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Lambert, D., and R. Newcomb (1989) “Gaia, Organisms, and a Structuralist View of Nature,” in Bunyard and Goldsmith, Gaia and Evolution, pp. 75-76.

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Lovelock, “The Earth as a Living Organism,” p. 488.

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Tilman, D., and J. A. Downing (1994) “Biodiversity and Stability in Grasslands,” Nature 367:363-65.

105

Technically, this group comprises 13 distinct families of birds, combined into a higher-level grouping (or “suborder”) known as the Charadrii. For information on the heterosexual mating systems in these families, see del Hoyo, J., A. Elliott, and J. Sargatal, eds., (1996) Handbook of the Birds of the World, vol. 3: Hoatzin to Auks, pp. 276-555 (Barcelona: Lynx Edicións); Paton, P. W. C. (1995) “Breeding Biology of Snowy Plovers at Great Salt Lake, Utah,” Wilson Bulletin 107:275-88; Nethersole-Thompson, D., and M. Nethersole-Thompson (1986) Waders: Their Breeding, Haunts, and Watchers (Calton: T. and A. D. Poyser); Pitelka, F. A., R. T. Holmes, and S. F. MacLean Jr. (1974) “Ecology and Evolution of Social Organization in Arctic Sandpipers,” Arnerican Zoologist 14:185—204. For details of species involving homosexual activity, see the profiles and references in part 2.

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Carranza, J., S. J. Hidalgo de Trucios, and V. Ena (1989) “Mating System Flexibility in the Great Bustard: A Comparative Study,” Bird Study 36:192—98. For further discussion of the possible benefits provided by behavioral plasticity, and variable sexual behaviors as a response to environmental or social variability, see Komers, P. E. (1997) “Behavioral Plasticity in Variable Environments,” Canadian Journal of Zoology 75:161— 69; Carroll, S. P., and P. S. Corneli (1995) “Divergence in Male Mating Tactics Between Two Populations of the Soapberry Bug: II. Genetic Change and the Evolution of a Plastic Reaction Norm in a Variable Social Environment,” Behavioral Ecology 6:46-56; Rodd, F. H., and M. B. Sokolowski (1995) “Complex Origins of Variation in the Sexual Behavior of Male Trinidadian Guppies, Poecilia reticulata: Interactions Between Social Environment, Heredity, Body Size, and Age,” Animal Behavior 49:1139–59. For an analysis of nonbreeding as an adaptive response to environmental variability, see, for example, Aebischer and Wanless 1992 (Shag).

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Golden Plover (Nethersole-Thompson and Nethersole-Thompson 1961:207-8 [on the possibility that “disruption” of heterosexual pairing in related species of plovers is due to late snow-melts, see Johnson, O. W., P. M. Johnson, P. L. Bruner, A. E. Bruner, R. J. Kienholz, and P. A. Brusseau (1997) “Male-Biased Breeding Ground Fidelity and Longevity in American Golden-Plovers,” Wilson Bulletin 109:348—351]); Grizzly Bear (Craighead et al. 1995:216-17; J. W. Craighead, personal communication); Ostrich (Sauer 1972:717); Ring-billed and California Gulls (Conover et al. 1979); Rhesus Macaque (Fairbanks et al. 1977:247-48); Stumptail Macaque and other primates (Bernstein 1980:32; Vasey, “Homosexual Behavior in Primates,” pp. 193-94). See also Hand (1985) for the suggestion that environmental “stresses” may call forth “plastic” social and sexual responses (such as homosexual pairing) in Laughing Gulls and other species. As noted in chapter 4, the occasional association of homosexuality with “unusual” ecological (or other) conditions is typically interpreted by scientists in a negative way, as evidence of a “disturbed” biological or social order rather than of a flexible response to (or synergy with) ongoing environmental flux. Moreover, the evidence for many of these cases—while intriguing—is anecdotal at best, and more systematic investigation will be necessary before any conclusions or even further speculations can be put forward in this regard.