Editing Sociobiology (section)

=== Natural selection ===

[[File:Nikolaas Tinbergen 1978.jpg |upright |thumb |[[Nikolaas Tinbergen]], whose work influenced sociobiology]]

Sociobiologists maintain that human and other animal behavior can be partly explained as the outcome of natural selection. They contend that in order to fully understand behavior, it must be analyzed in terms of evolution, principally by [[natural selection]].<ref name="Mohammed 2019"/> Sociobiology is based upon two fundamental premises:<ref name="Mohammed 2019"/>

* Certain behavioral traits are inherited,
* Inherited behavioral traits have been honed by natural selection and were [[adaptation|adaptive]] in the environment in which they evolved.

Sociobiology uses [[Nikolaas Tinbergen]]'s [[Tinbergen's four questions|four questions]] to search for explanations of animal behavior.<ref name="Birkhead 2014">{{cite journal |last=Birkhead |first=T. R. |title=Reflections |journal=Behavioral Ecology |volume=25 |issue=2 |date=1 March 2014 |issn=1045-2249 |doi=10.1093/beheco/art123 |doi-access=free |pages=239–241 |url=https://academic.oup.com/beheco/article-pdf/25/2/239/605702/art123.pdf}}</ref> Two of these categories are at the species level; two, at the individual level. The species-level categories (often called "ultimate explanations") are<ref name="MacDougall-Shackleton 2011">{{Cite journal |last=MacDougall-Shackleton |first=Scott A. |date=2011-07-27 |title=The levels of analysis revisited |journal=[[Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B]]: Biological Sciences |volume=366 |issue=1574 |pages=2076–2085 |doi=10.1098/rstb.2010.0363 |pmc=3130367 |pmid=21690126}}</ref>

* the adaptive function that a behavior serves and
* the [[phylogeny|historical evolutionary process]] that resulted in this functionality.

The individual-level categories (often called "proximate explanations") are<ref name="MacDougall-Shackleton 2011"/>

* the [[ontogeny|development of the individual]] and
* the proximate mechanism (such as [[brain anatomy]] and [[hormone]]s).