Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1975. dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - One of E. O. Wilson's most important books (as well as his largest and heaviest), a work which sparked a new field arguing that social behaviors, even human ones, have an evolutionary basis. It forever changed the nature-versus-nurture debate by proposing that biology, not just environment, shapes our social instincts like altruism and aggression. This book was later ranked in a poll of the officers and fellows of the international Animal Behavior Society as the most important book on animal behavior of all time, and is regarded today as the founding text of sociobiology and its offshoot, evolutionary psychology. INSCRIBED on the title page to the late Oklahoma collector, Larry Owens, with a finely drawn picture of an ant beneath his signature. An attractive publication, illustrated with 43 tables, 31 halftone figures, 209 line drawings by Sarah Landry, including some double page spreads. Glossary, bibliography, index/ Measures just over 10 inches square. ix, 697 pp. ISBN: 0-674816218.