Social complexity as a proximate and ultimate factor in communicative complexity
- T. Freeberg, Robin I. M. Dunbar, T. Ord
- PsychologyPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B…
- 5 July 2012
Some of the historical arguments that led to the social complexity hypothesis are described, and evidence in support of the hypothesis is reviewed, to discuss social complexity as a driver of communication and possible causal factor in human language origins.
Alert signals enhance animal communication in “noisy” environments
It is shown that free-living territorial Anolis lizards add an “alert” to visual displays when communicating to distant receivers in situations of poor visibility, and that these introductory alerts in turn enhance signal detection in adverse signaling conditions.
Digital video playback and visual communication in lizards
- T. Ord, R. Peters, C. Evans, Alan J. Taylor
- Biology, PsychologyAnimal Behaviour
- 1 May 2002
The results show that video stimuli are appropriate for the experimental analysis of Jacky dragon aggressive displays, and compare the potential shortcomings of video playback with those of other techniques and conclude that no approach offers a panacea, but that several have complementary characteristics.
Tracing the origins of signal diversity in anole lizards: phylogenetic approaches to inferring the evolution of complex behaviour
- T. Ord, E. Martins
- BiologyAnimal Behaviour
- 1 June 2006
Lizards speed up visual displays in noisy motion habitats
- T. Ord, R. Peters, B. Clucas, J. Stamps
- PhysicsProceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological…
- 22 April 2007
It is found that two species of Puerto Rican lizard increase the speed of body movements used in territorial signalling to apparently improve communication in visually ‘noisy’ environments of rapidly moving vegetation, the first evidence that animals change how they produce dynamic visual signals when communicating in noisy motion habitats.
Repeated evolution and the impact of evolutionary history on adaptation
- T. Ord, Thomas C. Summers
- Biology, PsychologyBMC Evolutionary Biology
- 10 July 2015
If the literature provides a reasonable reflection of the incidence of repeated evolution in nature, the findings suggest that natural selection can overcome contingent effects to an extent, but it depends heavily on the aspect of the phenotype targeted by selection.
Sexual selection, natural selection and the evolution of dimorphic coloration and ornamentation in agamid lizards
- D. Stuart-Fox, T. Ord
- Biology, PsychologyProceedings of the Royal Society of London…
- 7 November 2004
Natural selection constrains the evolution of elaborate ornamentation in both sexes as well as sexual dichromatism of body regions exposed to visual predators, which appear to be driven to a greater degree by sexual selection.
CONTRASTING THEORY WITH THE EMPIRICAL DATA OF SPECIES RECOGNITION
- T. Ord, Léandra King, Adrian R. Young
- Environmental Science, BiologyEvolution; international journal of organic…
- 1 September 2011
The phylogeny of species recognition provided another unexpected finding: the evolutionary relationships among species predicted whether courting males within species—but not females—would discriminate against heterospecifcs, implying that species recognition has evolved quite differently in the sexes.
Evolutionary predictors of mammalian home range size: body mass, diet and the environment
It is demonstrated that diet and body size both influence home range patterns but differ in their relative contribution, and it is shown that colonization of the marine environment has resulted in the expansion of home range size.
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