Evolution of mammalian social structure

Towards the evolution of social structure

To what extent can social structure result from evolutionary processes, as opposed to deliberately organised by a collection of intelligent individuals? That is, could social organisations (which are usefully identifiable as an entity in their own right) result from a mechanism which only relies on the processes of random variation and selective reproduction. Or, on the other hand, is it necess...

Modelling the Evolution of Social Structure

Although simple social structures are more common in animal societies, some taxa (mainly mammals) have complex, multi-level social systems, in which the levels reflect differential association. We develop a simulation model to explore the conditions under which multi-level social systems of this kind evolve. Our model focuses on the evolutionary trade-offs between foraging and social interactio...

Mother-infant bonding and the evolution of mammalian social relationships.

A wide variety of maternal, social and sexual bonding strategies have been described across mammalian species, including humans. Many of the neural and hormonal mechanisms that underpin the formation and maintenance of these bonds demonstrate a considerable degree of evolutionary conservation across a representative range of these species. However, there is also a considerable degree of diversi...

Mammalian evolution: is it due to social subordination?

Gene Family: Structure, Organization and Evolution

  Gene families are considered as groups of homologous genes which they share very similar sequences and they may have identical functions. Members of gene families may be found in tandem repeats or interspersed through the genome. These sequences are copies of the ancestral genes which have underwent changes. The multiple copies of each gene in a family were constructed based on gene duplicati...