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Infanticide by Males and Its Implications. Carel P. van Schaik and Charles H. Janson, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 569 pp.
Male primates sometimes kill young. In some species it appears to be relatively common; in others it does not appear to occur at all. Although there are a number of hypotheses proposed to explain males' killing of infants, the majority of recent attention has focused on the "sexual selection hypothesis," which states that infanticide is an evolutionarily adaptive strategy for male primates. The killing of infants is an occurrence that biologically, and culturally, calls out for explanation.
This edited volume focuses on a data driven review of infanticide in primates and a few other animal groups and the proposal of testable models with an emphasis on the sexual selection hypothesis. There is also a set of essays denouncing those who argue against the sexual selection hypothesis. The book is divided into five sections with one to seven chapters each, for a total of 19 chapters. Given space constraints I cannot effectively review all chapters here, so I will focus on a few I consider particularly pertinent.
Chapter 2, in section one, is a must read for anyone wising to view the hard data set for infanticide in primates. This chapter provides a good overview of the data, assumptions, and competing hypotheses for infanticide in primates. A full list of the 55 observed infanticides in 17 primate species (table 2.1) and a list of those primate species where infanticide has been observed, inferred, or assumed to have occurred in captivity or in the field (41 species, table 2.2) are given. Van Schaik concludes that many cases of observed infanticide in primates are largely or entirely consistent with the sexual selection hypothesis. He suggests that while other hypotheses explain some of the cases, none of them, by themselves, explain a majority and concludes that the sexual selection hypothesis is then the best explanatory tool for infanticide in primates, and in all mammals (however, see ch. 8, below). The chapter ends with a suggestion for future areas of investigation, including: why infanticide occurs between groups, what are the genetics of infanticide, and what kinds of responses should females exhibit. In chapter 3, van Schaik lays out...