Ch. 51

1. Animal Behavior Ch. 51

2. Sensory Inputs can Stimulate Simple and Complex Behaviors Behavior • An action carried out by muscles under control of the nervous system in response to a stimulus (Proximate causation) • What stimulus elicits the behavior and what physiological mechanisms mediate the response? • How does the animal’s experience during growth and development influence the response? (Ultimate Causation) 3. How does the behavior aid survival and reproduction? 4. What is the behavior's evolutionary history?

3. Fixed Action Patterns FAP • Sequence of unlearned acts directly linked to a simple stimulus Sign Stimulus • External cue that triggers a FAP

4. Migration Regular, long-distance change in location How is this done? What are the clues? • Sun • Stars • Magnetic field • Magnetite • Photoreceptors in the eye

5. Animal Signals and Communication Signal • Stimulus transferred from one individual to another Communication • Transmission and reception of signals Pheromones • Used by animals that communicate through odors or tastes

6. Animal Signals and Communication Round Dance Waggle Dance

7. Experience and Behavior Innate Behavior • Behavior that is developmentally fixed • Displayed by all members despite internal and environmental differences Learning • Modification of behavior based on specific experiences • Imprinting • Spatial Learning • Cognitive Maps • Associative Learning • Cognition • Social learning

8. Learning Imprinting • Formation at a specific stage in life of a long-lasting behavioral response to a particular individual or object • Includes both learned and innate components • Sensitive period • Limited developmental phase when this type of learning can occur

9. Learning Spatial Learning • Spatial variation exists in every environment • Establishment of a memory that reflects the environment’s spatial structure • Cognitive Maps • A representation in the nervous system of the spatial relationships between object’s in an animal’s surroundings

10. Learning Associative Learning • Ability to associate one environmental stimulus with another • Classical conditioning • Pavlov’s dogs • Operant conditioning • Skinner box

11. Learning Cognition • Process of knowing that involves awareness, reasoning, recollection and judgment • Problem solving • Cognitive activity of devising a method to proceed from one state to another in the face of real or apparent obstacles

12. Learning Social learning • Learning through observing others

13. Foraging Behavior Foraging • Activities an animal uses to search for, recognize, and capture food items Optimal foraging model • Natural selection should favor a model that minimizes the cost of foraging and maximizes the benefits Balancing Risk and Reward

14. Mating Behavior and Mate Choice Mating Behavior • Seeking/attracting mates, choosing among potential mates, competing for mates, caring for offspring Promiscuous • Mating with no strong pair bonds Monogamous • Mating with strong pair bonds Polygamous • An individual of one sex mating with several of the opposite sex • Polygyny (single male) • Polyandry (single female)

15. Altruism A behavior that reduces an animal’s individual fitness but increases the fitness of other individuals in the population Inclusive fitness • Total effect an individual has on proliferating its genes by producing its own offspring AND by providing aid that enables other close relatives, who share many of those genes, to produce offspring Reciprocal altruism • Explains altruism that occurs between unrelated humans • Rare in other animals