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10 - Evolutionary endocrinology of the cercopithecoids
- Edited by Paul F. Whitehead, Clifford J. Jolly, New York University
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- Book:
- Old World Monkeys
- Published online:
- 08 October 2009
- Print publication:
- 04 May 2000, pp 269-297
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Summary
Introduction
Thirty years ago, three disciplines – ethology, endocrinology, and ecology – undertook the explanation of primate social behavior. Ethological methods have since become universal in primatology, but endocrine and ecological investigations have maintained greater distance. Despite remarkable similarities in the research plans presented in influential papers in behavioral endocrinology (Beach, 1975) and socioecology (Crook et al., 1976) (see Fig. 10.1), differing methods and priorities (see Table 10.1) set these two research areas on divergent trajectories. The experimental methods of early behavioral endocrinology in which hormones were detected and characterized by their action focused attention on the evidence and mechanisms for hormonal influences on individual behavior with less attention to social context and contingencies (Worthman, 1990). Early socioecology, relying on correlations between gross categories of social system and environment, sidestepped the issue of process (Richard, 1981) while focusing attention on the group as the locus of behavioral evolution. Although these different emphases hampered the integration of endocrine and ecological perspectives, the research areas have independently converged as each has broadened its methodologies and perspectives. The causal focus and experimental approaches of behavioral endocrinology have expanded to include a more synergistic framework and observational approach, termed “socioendocrinology,” reflecting an emerging view of the individual as a social organism and new attention to the role of social processes in the regulation of hormone function (Bercovitch and Ziegler, 1990).
7 - Diet, hormones, and health: an evolutionary–ecological perspective
- Edited by Catherine Panter-Brick, University of Durham, Carol M. Worthman, Emory University, Atlanta
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- Book:
- Hormones, Health and Behaviour
- Published online:
- 29 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 29 October 1998, pp 210-243
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Summary
Introduction
The old adage “you are what you eat” may be more apt than we ever could have imagined. Diet not only influences human health and development but also has shaped the evolution of our behavior and physiology. Although anthropologists traditionally have viewed culture as an intentional process obviating biological adaptation, there is good evidence that cultural practices can produce both physiological and evolutionary changes in human populations (Cohen & Armelagos, 1984; Durham, 1991). Biological responses, in turn, exert selective pressures on cultural traits (Rindos, 1989). Plant exploitation, cultivation, and consumption are good examples of these interactions. This chapter examines the influence of diet on cancer risk from an adaptive and phylogenetic perspective. It describes the growth of cancer and other chronic diseases in Western populations in relation to nutritional and other dietary constituents that directly and indirectly influence the development and function of the reproductive system. The links between diet and reproductive cancer are explained as an outcome of human reproductive strategies, adaptations of the reproductive system that coordinate reproduction with optimal nutritional conditions. Dietary practices that elevate cancer risk are related to human food preferences and underlying perceptual mechanisms that may reflect ancestral foraging strategies. These foraging and reproductive strategies are argued to be ancestral traits that humans share with other apes, reflecting our evolutionary history as frugivorous primates adapted to variable and unpredictable food resources, a heritage that molded the domestication of human crops in prehistory and that propels modern human populations toward chronic disease as our food preferences are increasingly realized.
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