Of the Same Stripe, or Not—Exceptions That Prove Rules

Abstract

AbstractThis book has been about badgers—specifically Wytham’s badgers. This specificity is not blinkered—on the contrary it is a liberating opportunity to travel from the particular to the general. To use one population of badgers, studied in utmost detail, as a model for carnivore, even mammalian, behavioural and evolutionary ecology: The Badgers of Wytham Woods: A Model of Behaviour and Evolution. So, as our perspective broadens we explore variation beyond Wytham, first to badgers living beyond our special woodland elsewhere in the UK, then across the European continent to frame Wytham in the context of intra-specific variation. Onward, to their congeneric relatives in Japan, and then to other badgers in China, before really broadening the inter-specific net to embrace all carnivores. The Badgers of Wytham Woods reveals Wytham’s badgers, and their society, populations, and molecules to be fashioned by their ecology, framed by their mustelid inheritance and paradigms of mammalian evolution. This has been much more than a book about badgers, or even about one of the longest-running and diverse carnivore research projects ever: it is about a model species that offers a paradigm for understanding behaviour and evolution.