Phylogénie et homologie du comportement : les niveaux pertinents d’analyse

Résumé 0

The development of comparative studies of behaviour in the early XXth century has led to the emergence of the idea of behavioural homology. Today, the establishment of homology is rooted within phylogenetic analysis, when a priori hypotheses of detailed similarity are tested by congruence of characters during tree construction. In this procedure, detailed similarity needs to be documented with the appropriate ethological studies, taking into account morphological, neurological and behavioural observations, preferentially in a sequential and therefore reasonably detailed perspective. However, after the phylogenetic analysis, attention must also be paid to the evolutionary processes that gave birth to these behavioural characters, for building elaborated and plausible hypotheses of homology which incorporate all evolutionary possibilities of cooptation, recruitment, function transference and others.