PALEOETHOLOGY AND BEHAVIORAL SYSTEMS: THE USE OF THE COMPARATIVE METHOD IN MODELING THE BEHAVIORAL REPERTOIRES OF FOSSIL ORGANISMS AND COMMUNITIES

Ethology, the study of behavior as a biological phenomenon, was, from its inception, a comparative disciple. Konrad Lorenz (1950, pg. 238) stressed that the term “comparative” was not used merely colloquially but referred to “a certain rather complicated method of procedure” for formulating the relationships between diverse biological groups. Ethologists have mostly kept comparisons between extant species in order to ascertain not only the behaviors extant animals have at their disposal but also how these behaviors are organized and integrated together. Because paleoethology is directed at fossil species not available for direct manipulation it is not clear if classical ethological methods are sufficient for supporting the sort of inferences desired; nonetheless, the stress on comparative studies is useful because extant species and behaviors provide scaffolding to allow validation of paleoethological models.

The goal of the current paper is twofold: (1) to describe the contribution specifically made by comparing fossil behaviors to extant behaviors—in other words, I ask and attempt to answer what epistemic or inferential “oomph” is provided by having at least one of the elements in a paleoethological comparison be extant.

And, (2), to discuss the role for a systems level approach to fossil behavior. As claimed above, ethologist weren’t simply concerned with isolated behaviors (like feeding, excreting, foraging, etc) but with how these diverse behaviors are organized into a well integrated and functioning unit. It is this latter area that is ripe for exploration through the fossil record. Zhang et al (2015), for instance, provide a ethological interpretation of the zoophycos ichnospecies positing it as the by-product of a tightly integrated behavioral repertoire consisting of burrowing, feeding, and excreting. I argue that this ethological interpretation combined with the ichnofacies paradigm lends itself well to systems-level investigation. For one, not only do such trace fossils represent remnants of integrated behavior, but these traces and their relations to other traces (like those in the zoophycos ichnofacies) provide information regarding not only the distribution of behavioral systems through geological time, but how such behavioral systems are interact with others on an ecological level.