Behavioral lateralization in vertebrates – Two sides of the same coin

The interest in lateralisation, which has grown exponentially over the last two decades, led to the organization of a symposium entitled “Lateralised Behaviour”, the first to be set up within the serial European Conference on Behavioural Biology, held in Ferrara, Italy, in July 2010. The symposium was a success and attracted a lot of interest, and a few contributions were even hosted in other symposia or in poster sessions because there was not enough room for all within the proper symposium session. This book is directly derived from that symposium. In fact, Springer Verlag trusted in the quality of the contributors and in the interest in this topic, and offered the opportunity to publish the outcome of the contributions. This book aims to provide a simple, but updated, overview of the research on lateralisation in vertebrates, basically carried out in, but not necessarily restricted to, Europe. The eight chapters, arranged in phylogenetic order, cover almost all vertebrate classes, spanning bony fishes to mammals. It should be considered as a starting point, not state-of-the-art, for graduate students and non-specialist researchers. Our aim is that this book elicits interest in the reader and stimulates future research in this topic.