Chapter 35: Behavioral Adaptations to the environment

1. Chapter 35: Behavioral Adaptations to the environment

2. Monogamous • Animals form a bond with a single partner and both partners care for the offspring • Ex. Prairie vole: after they mate they associate with each other exclusively/ relationship begins when the female sniffs the scent of a potential male partner, the smell causes her to become sexually receptive

3. Promiscuous • Animals mate with multiple partners and form no last bonds • Example: meadow voles- do not form a memory of the hormones released by their mate

4. Behavior • An action carried out by muscles or glands under the control of the nervous system in response to an environmental cue • Example: courtship dances, aggressive posture • Behavioral ecologists-study behavior in a n evolutionary context • More examples: chemical communication

5. Ultimate and Proximate questions Proximate questions Ultimate questions Why a particular behavior occurs Look at phenotypes and adaptive behaviors Ultimate causes: answer ultimate questions and use evolutionary explanations for behavior • Concerns the immediate reason for a behavior • How it is triggered by stimuli and what physiological or anatomical mechanisms play a role • Ex: how do voles choose their mates? • Help to understand how a behavior occurs • Proximate causes: answers to the questions

6. Innate behavior • Under strong genetic control • Performed the same way by all individuals of the same species

7. Fixed Action Patterns (FAPs) • An unchangeable series of actions triggered by a specific stimulus • Once initiated the sequence is performed in its entirety • Ex: graylag goose-if the goose bumps into one of her eggs out of the nest she always retrieves it in the same manner-she stands up, extends her neck, uses a side-to-side motion to nudge the egg with her beak, sits down on the nest again, if the egg slips away, the goose still continues with the sequence

8. FAP • Baby bird- sense that an adult bird is near, it begs for food by raising its head, opening its mouth and cheeping • Adult bird-stuffs food in the gaping mouth

9. Ultimate causes of FAP • Automatically performing certain behaviors may maximize fitness so much that genes that may cause variants do not persist in populations • Ex. Kittiwakes show an innate aversion to cliff edges

10. FAP for reproductive behaviors • Each king penguin takes a turn incubated the egg while their mate feeds • Standing face to face the pair must execute a delicate series of maneuvers to pass the egg from the tops of one penguin’s feet to the tops of its partner’s feet, if one of them misses the egg may roll onto the ice and freeze to death

11. Behavior is the result of genetic and environmental factors • Experiments with fruit flies have led to the discovery of genes that govern learning, memory, internal clocks and mating behaviors

12. Cross fostering experiment

13. Learning

14. Imprinting requires both innate behavior and experience • Learning often interacts closely with innate behavior • Imprinting: learning limited to a specific time period in an animal’s life and is generally irreversible • Sensitive period-limited phase in an animal’s development when they can learn certain behaviors

15. Imprinting • Male birds memorize the song of their species during a sensitive period • They do not sing during this phase but several months later they being to practice the song and eventually reproduce it correctly

16. Kinesis • Random movement in response to a stimuli • May be starting or stopping, changing speed or turning more or less frequently • Sow bugs: live in moist habitats, in dry areas they exhibit kinesis to the moist areas

17. Taxis • A response directed toward or away from a stimulus • Trout-exhibits positive taxis in the current they automatically swim or orient themselves upstream

18. Spatial learning • Animals establish memories of landmarks in their environment that indicate the locations of food, nest site, prospective mates and potential hazards

19. Cognitive map • An internal representation or code of the spatial relationships among objects in an animal’s surroundings

20. Migration • The regular back and forth movement of animals between two geographic areas • Enables many species to access food resources throughout the year and to breed • Ex. Gray whale-feast on small, bottom-dwelling invertebrates that live in northern oceans, in autumn they leave their feeding grounds an begin a long trip south, females give birth before migrating back north with their young

21. Migration • Many birds migrate at night using the stars to find their way • Ex. Indigo bunting seems to avoid the need for a timing mechanism by fixing on the North Star • Some only migrate using innate environmental cues

22. Trial and error learning • Associative learning is the ability to associate one environmental feature with another • Trial and error learning is when an animal learns to associate one of its own behaviors with a positive or negative effect

23. Social learning • Learning by observing the behaviors of others • Predators learn basic hunting skills from their mothers • Vervet monkeys: give distinct alarm calls when they see leopards, eagles or snakes all of which prey on vervets, vervet sees the leopard, it gives a loud barking sound when it sees an eagle it gives a short two syllable cough and the snake alarm is a chutter

24. Cognition • The process carried out by an animal’s nervous system to perceive, store, integrate and use information gathered by the senses • Problem solving-the process of applying past experience to overcome obstacles in novel situations

25. Foraging • Food obtaining behaviors • Search, recognize, capture • Crows-generalists • Koala-specialist

26. Search image • Enables animal to find particular food efficiently • Optimal foraging theory-an animal’s feeding behavior should provide maximal energy expense and minimal risk of being eaten while foraging

27. Wagtails and dung flies