Habitat choice models

Although this book commenced mainly with ecological considerations, the last chapter was where the first major considerations of an ecobehavioral approach were presented. In any case, the development of a coherent evolutionary biology of an organism in its habitat depends upon a unification of genetics, ecology, and the study of behavior. For many organisms, we lack the necessary background information for attempts at unifying the three entities. There is also the difficulty of demonstrating the connection between the laboratory and the field. This requires the study of associations among species and genetic variants within species at the population level, with habitats chosen and resources utilized in nature. In the last few years, this is beginning to be achieved especially in Drosophila, so that at the intraspecific level, ecological and behavioral genetics are becoming merged into ecobehavioral genetics. Emphasis on this area of genetics should increase, given the rapid development of the hybrid fields of behavioral ecology and behavior genetics, although ecological genetics has developed over a longer period of time. Ecobehavioral genetic studies of traits involved in habitat selection are important for our understanding of evolutionary processes in natural populations.