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Breaking the Social–Non‐social Dichotomy: A Role for Reptiles in Vertebrate Social Behavior Research?
Author(s) -
Doody J. Sean,
Burghardt Gordon M.,
Dinets Vladimir
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
ethology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.739
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1439-0310
pISSN - 0179-1613
DOI - 10.1111/eth.12047
Subject(s) - vertebrate , social group , neglect , social relation , diversity (politics) , social evolution , paraphyly , social behavior , social complexity , social stratification , social learning , perspective (graphical) , social psychology , social animal , sociology , biology , psychology , evolutionary biology , social science , phylogenetics , anthropology , clade , biochemistry , pedagogy , psychiatry , artificial intelligence , gene , computer science
Abstract Although social behavior in vertebrates spans a continuum from solitary to highly social, taxa are often dichotomized as either ‘social’ or ‘non‐social’. We argue that this social dichotomy is overly simplistic, neglects the diversity of vertebrate social systems, impedes our understanding of the evolution of social behavior, and perpetuates the erroneous belief that one group—the reptiles—is primarily ‘non‐social’. This perspective essay highlights the diversity and complexity of reptile social systems, briefly reviews reasons for their historical neglect in research, and indicates how reptiles can contribute to our understanding of the evolution of vertebrate social behavior. Although a robust review of social behavior across vertebrates is lacking, the repeated evolution of social systems in multiple independent lineages enables investigation of the factors that promote shifts in vertebrate social behavior and the paraphyly of reptiles reinforces the need to understand reptile social behavior.