Levitis Daniel A, Lidicker William Z, Freund Glenn
Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley.
Anim Behav. 2009 Jul 1;78(1):103-110. doi: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.03.018.
Behavioural biology is a major discipline within biology, centred on the key concept of behaviour.' But how is behaviour' defined, and how should it be defined? We outline what characteristics we believe a scientific definition should have, and why we think it important that a definition have these traits. We then examine the range of available published definitions for the word. Finding no consensus, we present survey responses from 174 members of three behaviour-focused scientific societies as to their understanding of the term. Here again, we find surprisingly widespread disagreement as to what qualifies as behaviour. Respondents contradict themselves, each other, and published definitions, indicating that they are using individually variable intuitive, rather than codified, meanings of `behaviour.' We offer a new definition, based largely on survey responses: "Behaviour is the internally coordinated responses (actions or inactions) of whole living organisms (individuals or groups) to internal and/or external stimuli, excluding responses more easily understood as developmental changes." Finally, we discuss the usage, meanings and limitations of this definition.
行为生物学是生物学中的一门主要学科，以“行为”这一关键概念为核心。但“行为”是如何定义的，又应该如何定义呢？我们概述了我们认为科学定义应具备的特征，以及为何我们认为定义具有这些特征很重要。然后，我们研究了该词已发表的各种可用定义。由于未达成共识，我们展示了来自三个专注于行为研究的科学学会的174名成员对该术语理解的调查回复。在此，我们再次发现，对于什么可被视为行为，存在惊人的广泛分歧。受访者自相矛盾，相互矛盾，也与已发表的定义相矛盾，这表明他们使用的是各自不同的关于“行为”的直观含义，而非编纂好的含义。我们基于调查回复给出了一个新定义：“行为是整个生物体（个体或群体）对内部和/或外部刺激的内部协调反应（行动或不行动），不包括那些更易被理解为发育变化的反应。”最后，我们讨论了这个定义的用法、含义及局限性。
