Am I Adapted to My Environment?

Am I Adapted to My Environment? Yup -- or you wouldn't be here!

When I think of environment, I often think of food, shelter, and weather, and oh yeah, behavior. Isn't behavior in service to the needs of foraging, avoiding predators, thermoregulation cycles? Well, yes, or at least, perhaps. But how is your behavior adapted to your environment? Doesn't your environment include conspecifics? In what ways do spend your time so that you learn and survive?

Behavior, especially interdependencies between individual animals, can have as much effect as good forage, appropriate refugia, and preferred optimum temperature zones. Individual behavior, then, should be adapted to the social structure in which an animal lives. Even in a non-cooperative animal like Ctenosaura similis, an understanding of which same-species animals might be a danger, or useful, or neutral might well tip the balance between surviving and thriving, between some offspring, and overall better fitness.

So, yes, you are adapted to your world!