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Animal Behavior Notes!. Behavior. What an animal does & How an animal does it! Think of all of the behaviors of your pet...or a friends’ pet. List them and classify them as either being genetically “innate” or learned. Behavioral Ecology.
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Behavior • What an animal does & How an animal does it! • Think of all of the behaviors of your pet...or a friends’ pet. List them and classify them as either being genetically “innate” or learned.
Behavioral Ecology • Behavioral Ecology emphasizes evolutionary hypothesis. • Based on the fact that animals will act in a way that will increase their Darwinian fitness. What does “fitness” refer to in Darwinian terms?
What questions can we ask? • Proximate causes • immediate stimulus & mechanism • “how” & “what” questions • Ultimate causes • evolutionary significance • how does behavior contribute to survival & reproduction • adaptive value • “why” questions • male songbird • what triggers singing? how does he sing? why does he sing? how does daylength influence breeding? why do cranes breed in spring? Courtship behavior in cranes what,…how… & why questions
P & E Practice • Human Sweet-tooth • Sonar Clicks in Bats
Karl von Frisch Niko Tinbergen Konrad Lorenz ETHOLOGY Pioneers in the Study of An. Behavior
Two Classifications of Behavior – Who cares??? • ADAPTIVE ADVANTAGE • innate behaviors • automatic, fixed, “built-in”, no “learning curve” • despite different environments, all individuals exhibit the behavior • ex. early survival, reproduction, kinesis, taxis • learned behaviors • modified by experience • variable, changeable • flexible with a complex & changing environment
Innate behaviors • Fixed action patterns (FAP) • sequence of behaviors essentially unchangeable & usually conducted to completion once started • sign stimulus • the releaser that triggers a FAP
Innate: Fixed Action Patterns (FAP) Digger wasp egg rolling in geese Do humans exhibit Fixed Action Patterns?
I & L: Imprinting CRITICAL PERIOD
Learned Behavior • Associative learning • learning to associate a stimulus with a consequence
crow Learning: Problem-solving • Do other animals reason?
Social Behavior • Communication/Language • Agonistic Behaviors • Dominance Hierarchy • Cooperation • Altruistic Behavior
Female mosquito use CO2 concentrations to locate victims Spider using moth sex pheromones, as allomones, to lure its prey Communication by scent
b. Agonistic behaviors Lizard Behavior
e. Altruistic Behavior kin selection • increasing survival of close relatives passes these genes on to the next generation How can this be of adaptive value? Warning Calls