Animal Behavior (Behavioral Ecology)

1. Animal Behavior(Behavioral Ecology) Studying how animal behavior develops, evolves, and contributes to their survival and reproductive success

2. What is Behavior? The visible result of an animals muscular or physiological activity. • How a pred. chases its prey, fish raising fins in a territorial display, songs or calls as a result of moving air. Non-muscular activities can be considered behavior as well • Pheromones secreted to attract opposite sex, learning Everything an animal does and how it does it

3. A male African cichlid (Neolamprologus tetracephalus) with erect fins.  Muscular contraction that raises the fins is a behavioral response to a threat to the fish′s territory.

4. Proximate and Ultimate Questions Specific questions (where in sci. meth.?) asked when a certain behavior is observed. Proximate questions: focus on the environmental stimuli that trigger a behavior, as well as the genetic, physiological, and anatomical mechanisms underlying a behavioral act. • “how” questions Ultimate questions: address the evolutionary significance of a behavior • Why did natural selection favor this behavior and not another one? “why” questions • Hypotheses addressing these questions propose that the behavior increases fitness in some way.

5. Red-Crowned Crane Example Male and female cranes engage in elaborate courtship rituals involving graceful dance-like movements and synchronized songs in order to determine potential mates. Each spring, thousands of cranes migrate thousands of kilometers north (Eurasia, N.Am., N.Af.) to nest and breed following their courtship behavior.

6. Proximate question for crane migration behavior: • How does day length influence breeding by red-crowned cranes? • Hypo: breeding, and therefore migration is triggered by an increased amount of sunlight as days get longer. • Results: Experiments with various birds demonstrate that an increase exposure to sunlight produces hormonal changes that induce behavior associated with reproduction (singing, nest building, and migration) • Proximate causes

7. Ultimate question for red-crowned cranes • Why do red-crowned cranes reproduce in spring / early summer and not some other time of year? • Hypo: Breeding is most productive that time of year ( Ample food supply for rapid growing young, increasing reproductive success (fitness) compared to birds that breed in other seasons. Proximate causation is different from ultimate causation, the 2 concepts are nevertheless connected. Courtship ?

8. Frequently Studied Behaviors

9. 1) Fixed Action Patterns (FAP) A sequence of unlearned (innate) behavioral acts that is unchangeable and, once initiated, is carried to completion Triggered by external sensory stimulus sign stimulus

11. 2) Imprinting A type of behavior that includes both innate and learned components and is generally irreversible. Sensitive Period: a limited phase of animal development that is the only time when certain behaviors can be learned. Nobel Prize Winning Konrad Lorenz, shown here with some of his imprinted goslings (1973) .

13. Imprinting for conservation.  Conservation biologists have taken advantage of imprinting by young whooping cranes as a means to teach the birds a migration route. A pilot wearing a crane suit in an ultralight plane acts as a surrogate parent.

14. 3) Directed Movements (Orientation Behaviors) Innate (genetic) behaviors that will place (mm – km) animals in more favorable conditions • Kinesis: a simple change in activity in response to a stimulus. • Ex. Sow bugs (crustaceans) exhibit kinesis in response to variation in humidity. They become more active in dry areas and less in humid ones. Though sow bugs do not move toward or away from specific conditions, their increased movement under dry conditions increases the chance that they will leave a dry area and encounter a moist area. And since they slow down in a moist area, they tend to stay there once they encounter it. • Taxis: Oriented movement toward (positive) or away (negative) from a specific stimulus.

16. 4) Learned Behaviors Classical Conditioning: the association of a normally irrelevant stimulus with a fixed behavioral response Operant Conditioning: A type of associative learning in which an animal learns to associate one of its own behaviors with a reward or punishment and then tends to repeat or avoid that behavior; also called trial–and–error learning. Cognition: The ability of an animal's nervous system to perceive, store, process, use, and apply information to new situations. (problem solving)

17. Operant conditioning. Having received a face full of quills, a young coyote has probably learned to avoid porcupines Cognition: Young chimpanzees learning to crack oil palm nuts by observing older chimpanzees.