ABSTRACT
Introduction This chapter is an introduction to several outstanding theoretical and empirical studies in behavioural biology and its closely related disciplines: cultural anthropology, neurobiology and the cognitive sciences. The three major components of behavioural biology are foraging, mate selection and the choice of a settlement or nest. From our perspective search theory is a unifying ingredient of this research with game theory also assuming a conspicuous role. We believe there is a fundamental connection between biology and economics where search is merely a single manifestation. Another way of recognizing this linkage is to show the close connections among Adam Smith, David Hume, Charles Darwin and other prominent biologists and economists. We are always aware of egregious mistakes attached to the supposition that economics is a universal lifesaver for any of the problems endogenous to another discipline.1 Context must never be overlooked either within or, especially, across disciplines. Given this basic restriction, we agree wholeheartedly with Frank (1998):
The theory of natural selection has always had a close affinity with economic principles.2 Darwin’s masterwork is about scarcity of resource, struggle for existence, efficiency of form, and measure of value. If offspring tend to be like their parents, then natural selection produces a degree of economic efficiency measured by reproductive success. The reason is simple: the relatively inefficient have failed to reproduce and have disappeared.
