Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Animal homosexuality in evolutionary perspective
- 2 The comparative study of homosexual behaviour
- 3 Genetics of homosexuality
- 4 Ontogenetic processes
- 5 The endocrine and nervous systems: a network of causality for homosexual behaviour
- 6 Immunology and homosexuality
- 7 Sexual segregation effects
- 8 The social, life history and ecological theatres of animal homosexual behaviour
- 9 Homosexual behaviour in primates
- 10 A Biosocial Model for the evolution and maintenance of homosexual behaviour in birds and mammals
- Appendix 1 Glossary
- Appendix 2 Predictions of the Synthetic Reproductive Skew Model of Homosexuality and results obtained in the comparative tests of the model carried out in birds and mammals
- Appendix 3 Comments on further results of comparative analyses of independent contrasts reported in the full correlation matrices of birds and mammals
- References
- Index
- Plates
10 - A Biosocial Model for the evolution and maintenance of homosexual behaviour in birds and mammals
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Preface
- 1 Animal homosexuality in evolutionary perspective
- 2 The comparative study of homosexual behaviour
- 3 Genetics of homosexuality
- 4 Ontogenetic processes
- 5 The endocrine and nervous systems: a network of causality for homosexual behaviour
- 6 Immunology and homosexuality
- 7 Sexual segregation effects
- 8 The social, life history and ecological theatres of animal homosexual behaviour
- 9 Homosexual behaviour in primates
- 10 A Biosocial Model for the evolution and maintenance of homosexual behaviour in birds and mammals
- Appendix 1 Glossary
- Appendix 2 Predictions of the Synthetic Reproductive Skew Model of Homosexuality and results obtained in the comparative tests of the model carried out in birds and mammals
- Appendix 3 Comments on further results of comparative analyses of independent contrasts reported in the full correlation matrices of birds and mammals
- References
- Index
- Plates
Summary
Ultimately, though…it will be necessary to reintegrate the different levels of investigation: the level of genes, synapses, and neurotransmitters, and the level of conscious and unconscious mental processes … What such a synthesis will ultimately have to say about sexual orientation is difficult to predict.
Simon LeVay Queer Science (1996: 85)I started this book by introducing animal homosexual behaviour and orientation as an evolutionary paradox. I believe that I am in the position, in this final chapter, to end it with something somewhat more exciting than the Socratic ‘one thing only I know and that is that I know nothing’, or, as the endocrinologist Louis Gooren put it in a somewhat less dramatic way: ‘But it is probably fair to say that we are far away from an understanding of how … sexual orientation come[s] about’ (Gooren 2006: 599). My cautious optimism springs from the results of a wealth of experimental and observational research carried out on diverse taxa by many experts in various fields, from genetics, endocrinology, neurobiology and immunology to behavioural and evolutionary ecology, psychology, anthropology and sociology, that address the causation of same-sex sexuality through various mechanisms and across different levels of analysis. It also springs from the results of the comparative analyses and meta-analytical tests carried out in the various chapters.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Animal HomosexualityA Biosocial Perspective, pp. 401 - 426Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010