Human Behavioural Ecology

Human behavioural ecology (HBE) can be defined as the evolutionary ecology of human behaviour. Its central focus is how the behaviour of modern humans reflects our species’ history of natural selection. The field has grown rapidly over the last twenty years, in anthropology and other social and behavioural sciences. It passes under many names, including Darwinian (or evolutionary) anthropology, human evolutionary ecology, evolutionary biological anthropology, human ethology, sociobiology, socioecology and biosocial (or biocultural) science. Most researchers generally shun using the controversial term sociobiology, for three reasons: the inaccurate equation of sociobiology with kin selection (which is but one of its models), the general but erroneous view that sociobiologists see behaviour as genetically determined, and to distance themselves from popular but highly speculative works under that label.