<p>The aim of this thesis was to study chickens of an F7 intercross between red junglefowl and White Leghorn layers in five behavioural tests to see if there were any correlations between traits in the intercross. 80 animals were used (40 males, 40 females); they were tested in a tonic immobility test, an open field, a fear of human test, an aggression test and lastly a sociality test. The results indicate a pair of correlations between the different variables; chickens with long tonic immobility duration were less aggressive, and chickens with a high fear of humans were more social towards other chickens, which could suggest a correlation between fear and social behaviour/aggression. The results from this study also support previous studies showing that one QTL controls chickens’ behaviour in the tonic immobility test based on the correlations found between the variables in the tonic immobility test. Differences between the genders were found in variables that correlated with each other; this could lead to a speculative suggestion that those behaviours are affected by genes on the X-chromosome. There was also a significant relationship between the weight of the male chickens and their behaviour in the open field test and in the fear of human test, in which the heavier males were less fearful than the lighter ones.</p>

<p>Historically during domestication of animals, tameness towards humans was likely the most desired trait and therefore bred on. The red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) is the wild progenitor of all domestic chicken breeds and earlier studies present clear morphological, physiological and behavioural differences between domesticated breeds and the non-domesticated red junglefowl. These changes may be the result of altered gene expression - pleiotropy or linked genes. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate (1) effects of tameness selection on social behaviour towards conspecifics and (2) social behaviour differences between the sexes. Two generations of red junglefowl, P0 and its offspring F1, were studied. Both generations were divided into three selection lines (tame, intermediate or fearful), depending on their results in a fear of humans test.  A novel type of social reinstatement test was set up, containing a non-social area without stimulus, and a social area containing a mirror serving as stimulus animals. The social and aggressive behaviours performed towards the mirror were recorded, so was the time spent in the social versus non-social part. An undisturbed behaviour test was performed, as well as a standardized social reinstatement test. The P0-females performed significantly more social behaviour (p=0.008) at 26 weeks than males in the mirror test, and females also displayed significantly more social (p=0.04) and agonistic behaviour (p<0.001) than males in the undisturbed behaviour test. The social reinstatement test displayed a significant effect between the selection lines with regards to sociality. This suggests that there are immediate selection responses in early domestication.</p>

<p>Social psychology is often said to be a scientific discipline aiming at the observation and explanation of actions between human beings or, more generally, between the human individual and the environment. This general proposition holds for most social psychologists, irrespective of allegiance. Accepting this, it is implied that we are observing the social aspect of a human individual. This text will ask for the conditions under which this social psychology is possible. Indeed, what has to be the case for the observation and explanation of the sociality of the individual to occur?</p><p>On the basis of G. H. Mead, generally considered the hub around which modern social psychology developed, it will be argued that for a social psychological science to be possible, conditions are implied that make it impossible. Less rhetorically put, accepting or returning to Meads social argument and trying to co-ordinate it with basic premises of scientific conduct, one will find oneself caught between two Meadian facts. On the one hand each individual must be considered social, i.e., appearing to experience as two objects at once. On the other hand, however, explaining an object is to state the object in an unambiguous fashion, i.e., as an independent, hence individual, object. </p><p>It will be argued here that Mead’s epistemology does not support a scientific and social psychology. Rather a scientific social psychology based on Mead constitutes a contradiction in terms, stemming from a series of misinterpretations. It is the objective of this text to demonstrate these misinterpretations with respect to attempts at a scientific social psychology based on the social vision of this scholar.</p>

Social psychology is often said to be a scientific discipline aiming at the observation and explanation of actions between human beings or, more generally, between the human individual and the environment. This general proposition holds for most social psychologists, irrespective of allegiance. Accepting this, it is implied that we are observing the social aspect of a human individual. This text will ask for the conditions under which this social psychology is possible. Indeed, what has to be the case for the observation and explanation of the sociality of the individual to occur? On the basis of G. H. Mead, generally considered the hub around which modern social psychology developed, it will be argued that for a social psychological science to be possible, conditions are implied that make it impossible. Less rhetorically put, accepting or returning to Meads social argument and trying to co-ordinate it with basic premises of scientific conduct, one will find oneself caught between two Meadian facts. On the one hand each individual must be considered social, i.e., appearing to experience as two objects at once. On the other hand, however, explaining an object is to state the object in an unambiguous fashion, i.e., as an independent, hence individual, object. It will be argued here that Mead’s epistemology does not support a scientific and social psychology. Rather a scientific social psychology based on Mead constitutes a contradiction in terms, stemming from a series of misinterpretations. It is the objective of this text to demonstrate these misinterpretations with respect to attempts at a scientific social psychology based on the social vision of this scholar.

The social organization of animal societies has important implications for several fields of biology, from managing wild populations to developing new ecological and evolutionary theory. Although much attention has been given to the formation and maintenance of societies of group living individuals, less is known about how societies of solitary individuals have been shaped and maintained. Traditionally, the evolution of social organizations in the mammalian order Carnivora has been regarded as a directional selection process from a solitary ancestry into progressively more advanced forms of sociality. In this thesis, I tested this model against an alternative model, assuming radiation from a socially flexible ancestry. I further explored sociality, resource use and dispersal of a solitary carnivore, the wolverine (Gulo gulo), in the light of these two evolutionary models. Phylogenetic reconstruction generally supported that carnivore social organizations evolved through directional selection from a solitary ancestor. However, results from captive wolverine females indicated that they might have rudimentary social tendencies, which rather support that sociality in carnivores radiated from a socially flexible ancestry. Wild wolverines in northwestern Brooks Range, Alaska, adhered to the commonly found ecological niche as a largely ungulate dependent generalist carnivore. Lack of sexual asymmetry in dispersal tendencies indicated that resource competition among wolverine females probably was high. I suggest that wolverines have latent abilities to aggregate, but that their phylogenetic legacy in terms of morphology has constrained them into an ecological niche where resource abundance and distribution generally inhibit aggregations. Due to contradictory results, I suggest further research to test evolutionary theory regarding carnivore social evolution, and particularly to explore new avenues into social evolution that better explain intra-specific variation in sociality, as well as formation and maintenance of solitary social systems.

The aim of this thesis was to study chickens of an F7 intercross between red junglefowl and White Leghorn layers in five behavioural tests to see if there were any correlations between traits in the intercross. 80 animals were used (40 males, 40 females); they were tested in a tonic immobility test, an open field, a fear of human test, an aggression test and lastly a sociality test. The results indicate a pair of correlations between the different variables; chickens with long tonic immobility duration were less aggressive, and chickens with a high fear of humans were more social towards other chickens, which could suggest a correlation between fear and social behaviour/aggression. The results from this study also support previous studies showing that one QTL controls chickens’ behaviour in the tonic immobility test based on the correlations found between the variables in the tonic immobility test. Differences between the genders were found in variables that correlated with each other; this could lead to a speculative suggestion that those behaviours are affected by genes on the X-chromosome. There was also a significant relationship between the weight of the male chickens and their behaviour in the open field test and in the fear of human test, in which the heavier males were less fearful than the lighter ones.

The seventeenth-century Neapolitan painter and satirist Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), long regarded as a harbinger of the ideals of professional independence that characterize the artists of the Romantic era, is here returned to the social circumstances of his own time. This dissertation argues that Rosa’s personal and professional identity of autonomy and his pursuit of an original, distinctive persona were facilitated by male friendship. A key component of the philosophical ideal to which Rosa and his friends subscribed, friendship is defined by a standard of egalitarianism that permits its practitioners to be at once dependent and independent. In his adoption and cultivation of the rituals and discourses of friendship – especially academic friendship – Rosa found a strategy for navigating the obligatorily socially-delineated parameters of self-fashioning in seicento Florence and Rome. Friendship permeated the most vital elements of Rosa’s career: his early theatrical practice in Rome, his private academy in Florence, and his business tactics as a painter and printmaker in Rome. This dissertation aims to open up an area of insight into Rosa as both unique among and representative of his contemporaries, and to expand upon the existing scholarly knowledge of an artist on the cusp of an important development in the history of the visual artist’s identity.

In this thesis I argue that the yaoi community addresses a gap in subculture studies through the ways in which women use the genre to socialize. Yaoi is a genre of Japanese animation and comics which focuses on romantic relationships between two men and is directly geared towards women. Through ethnographic research in the United States, I look at how the women I interviewed conceptualize their participation within the community and what yaoi means to them. The women within the yaoi community are not rebelliously opposing the mainstream as many subcultural theories suggest, but are instead carving out a social space for themselves and others who have a distinct taste for the yaoi genre.

The seventeenth-century Neapolitan painter and satirist Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), long regarded as a harbinger of the ideals of professional independence that characterize the artists of the Romantic era, is here returned to the social circumstances of his own time. This dissertation argues that Rosa’s personal and professional identity of autonomy and his pursuit of an original, distinctive persona were facilitated by male friendship. A key component of the philosophical ideal to which Rosa and his friends subscribed, friendship is defined by a standard of egalitarianism that permits its practitioners to be at once dependent and independent. In his adoption and cultivation of the rituals and discourses of friendship – especially academic friendship – Rosa found a strategy for navigating the obligatorily socially-delineated parameters of self-fashioning in seicento Florence and Rome. Friendship permeated the most vital elements of Rosa’s career: his early theatrical practice in Rome, his private academy in Florence, and his business tactics as a painter and printmaker in Rome. This dissertation aims to open up an area of insight into Rosa as both unique among and representative of his contemporaries, and to expand upon the existing scholarly knowledge of an artist on the cusp of an important development in the history of the visual artist’s identity.

The contagious nature of the black-tailed prairie dog (Cynomys ludovicianus) jump-yip display may provide information to signalers and receivers regarding the vigilance of neighbours. Videotaping jump-yip bouts and the behaviour of both bout initiators and respondents within those bouts provided evidence that: 1) individuals became vigilant immediately following jump-yip production, but exhibited minimal changes in their immediate post-jump-yip behaviour with changes in the characteristics of the preceding bout, 2) bout initiators spent more time actively foraging and exhibited vigilance behaviours less frequently with greater levels of response in the preceding jump-yip bout, 3) respondents spent more time actively foraging and less time vigilant following bouts with greater response. These results suggest that black-tailed prairie dogs base behavioural decisions at least in part on the characteristics of their jump-yip bouts and thus the jump yip display may provide information about the vigilance of group members. / October 2007