Attempted Solution to a Fundamental Psychobiological Problem. How to Determine Individual and Milieu Parameters from Species-Typical Behaviour of Animals in Their Natural EnvironmentsÊ

Reventlow, Iven. Edited and translated by Arne Friemuth Petersen, with a commentary and a postscript by Jens Mammen

ISBN 10: 8773044202 / ISBN 13: 9788773044209

Published by Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Copenhagen, 2019

About this Item

136 pp.

Seller Inventory # 36256

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Attempted Solution to a Fundamental Psychobiological Problem. How to Determine Individual and Milieu Parameters from Species-Typical Behaviour of Animals in Their Natural EnvironmentsÊ
• Publisher: Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Copenhagen
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 8773044202
• ISBN 13: 9788773044209
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: As new
• Book Type: book
• Seller catalogs:
  • Zoology

About this title

Synopsis

Sets out to find descriptive models for hierarchically organised behaviour using the relatively simple behavioural repertoire of the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus L.) as a test case, but with potential generalisations to other species, including humans. In collaboration with statistician Georg Rasch, Reventlow arrived at determining quantitatively, for the first time in the study of behaviour, the relative effect upon a resulting, observed behaviour from the animal's sensitivity, motivation etc. (individual parameters) on the one hand, and those of the natural environment (milieu parameters) on the other.

Of special interest for the psychobiology of sticklebacks are his results concerning the motivational systems, that ethologists presume control two kinds of overt behaviour, as he presents experimentally based arguments for the existence of a third autonomous motivation-system for the male stickleback's building and maintenance of its nest which, together with the previously established two primary systems for mating and territorial defence, better explains the existing results than the ethologists' two-system's motivational hierarchy alone seems to be able to do.