Dzieciobójstwo wśród naczelnych: przegląd hipotez
INFANTICIDE AMONG PRIMATES: REVIEW OF HYPOTHESES

Summary/Abstract: Infanticide occurs in diverse taxa of animals and remains a puzzling phenomenon. Ever since first witnessed, researchers have tried to explain this behaviour from an evolutionary perspective. Attention has mostly been focused on primates owing to their relatively easy individual identification and ecological and demographic long-term studies conducted on various species and populations within this order of mammals. During the late 1970s several hypotheses explaining infanticidal behaviour were proposed; however, consensus on this topic was not reached, especially on whether infanticide was an adaptive (increase of reproductive success of males, Sexual selection hypothesis) or a maladaptive behaviour (Social pathology or By-product of adaptive aggression hypothesis). In the last few decades, as a result of increased field data acquisition, knowledge about animal infanticide has expanded. To date, seven adaptive hypotheses have been proposed: Social selection, Parental manipulation, Resource competition, Nutritive benefits, Range expansion, Eliminate genes of current sexual rivals, Eliminate future sexual rivals, and non-adaptive: Social pathology and By-product of adaptive aggression. In the present paper each of these is discussed to assess their validity on the basis of reports from the field or captive studies on a range of primate species. The current knowledge on primate infanticide is summarized, and different approaches to explain this phenomenon over the past several years are presented.

• Details
• Contents