Gorilla society: What we know and don't know |
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| Authors: | A H Harcourt K J Stewart |
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| Institution: | 1. Department of Anthropology and the Graduate Group in Ecology at the University of California;2. Department of Anthropology, University of California;3. They are most recently the authors of Gorilla Society. Conflict, Compromise and Cooperation Between the Sexes, University of Chicago Press, 2007. |
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| Abstract: | Science is fairly certain that the gorilla lineage separated from the remainder of the hominoid clade about eight million years ago, 2 , 4 and that the chimpanzee lineage and hominin clade did so about a million years after that. 1 , 2 However, just this year, 2007, it was discovered that although the human head louse separated from the congeneric chimpanzee body louse (Pediculus) around the same time as the chimpanzee and hominin lineages split, 3 the human pubic louse apparently split from its sister species, the congeneric gorilla louse, Pthirus, 4.5 million years after their host lineages split. 3 No tested explanations exist for the discrepancy. Much is known about hominin evolution, but much remains to be discovered. The same is true of primate socioecology in general and gorilla socioecology in particular. |
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| Keywords: | competition cooperation infanticide predation socioecology |
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