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HIERARCHICAL ORGANIZATION, REVISITED by KEITH NELSON (University of California, Bodega Marine Laboratory, Bodega Bay, California 94923, United States) ABSTRACT Concepts in DAWKINS' (1976) paper on hierarchical organization are reviewed and areas of confusion discussed. The complex singing organization in the song thrush (Turdus philomelos) is analyzed in terms of hierarchical organization and Markov pro- cess which are shown at each level to be perfectly compatible. However, remote con- tingence is shown to be pervasive, and thus song thrush singing organization is ultimately non-Markovian. "Relative hierarchies" or "heterarchy" are contrasted with distributed patterns of activity as models of control. KEY WORDS: behavior, birdsong, Turdus, temporal patterning, Markov chain, hierar- chy, hierarchical organization, heterarchy, distributed control. 1. INTRODUCTION Everything is hierarchically organized. This began to be evident soon after humans felt the need to classify things. It must have been a com- forting thought indeed. Not so comforting is the observation that things seem simultaneously to be arranged non-hierarchically. In this paper I examine ways in which behavior might be hierar- chically organized, and what might constitute convincing evidence for each. Some concepts in DAWKINS' (1976) influential paper entitled "Hierarchical organization: a candidate principle for ethology" are rev3/?yved. Once again
Netherlands Journal of Zoology (in 2003 continued as Animal Biology) – Brill
Published: Jan 1, 1989
Keywords: Turdus; distributed control; birdsong; temporal patterning; heterarchy; hierarchical organization; Markov chain; behavior; hierarchy
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