ABSTRACT
Many persons viewing ethology from afar receive the impression that comparative studies of behavior are primarily motivated by an interest in classifying the organisms of study. The table schematizes the inherently interdisciplinary nature of ethological research the ethologist must be a bit of a physiologist to understand control, a bit of a developmental geneticist to study ontogeny, a bit of an ecologist to study adaptive function, and a bit of an evolutionary systematist to study phylogenetic origins. The ethologist studies a range of species in order to learn various things relating to the determinants of behavior. The focus is on understanding the dynamic transformations of information as come from the environment and pass through the organism. The kind of dynamic control shown in animal behavior is strongly influenced by the past history of the individual animal. The process of speciation combined with the forces of natural selection through time has produced the phylogenetic history of behavioral patterns of species.
