Animal Behavior 480

1. Animal Behavior 480 • John Laundré • Office is 303 Illick (office hours posted) • Tel: 4938 • Email: • TA’s • Amanda Dillon • Ayesha Prasad • William Helenbrook

2. Logistics • Lectures Mon, Wed and Fri and a Recitation once a week • Grade based on 2 lecture exams (25% each), Attendance (10%), Recitation participation and attendance (25%) and a behavioral profile (15%). • Lecture exams: multiple guess/short answer.

3. Logistics cont. • Behavioral profile: Each student will select an animal species. They will gather information on aspects of this species’ behavior (basic behavior, sexual behavior, behavioral ecology, etc. You will then write a 5-10 (No more than 10!) summary of the important aspects of its behavior. • Will give more details later on format

4. Logistics cont. • Recitations: Review of classic and recent literature in animal behavior. Each week students will present and discuss assigned articles. Your grade will depend on your participation and the quality of your presentation.

5. Animal Behavior – what is it? • Study of behavior: All aspects of behavior: instinctive, innate, learned, ecological behavior, etc. • But what is Behavior???? • Animal vs plant!! We move, they don’t? • Why do animals “behave”?

6. What is animal behavior? • Way animals interact with each other, the environment, etc. • But why? Why do we react/interact? • Basic reason is survival: individual/species • What is basis to survival? • To better understand what is behavior and why animals behave, need to go to basics: • Energy!!

7. Why Energy? • All systems, cells to ecosystems, function on energy flow. • Energy machines, capturing, processing, passing energy through them. • Basis of all biology is Energy • Examples

8. Energy • Species: Energy capturing machines • Death: loss of ability to capture energy • Populations trap energy via reproduction • Populations lose energy via mortality • Communities energy flow through trophic levels • Communities: Food webs/chains

9. Energy • Ecosystems: energy transfer among systems: aquatic to terrestrial, etc. • Take home message: Whole biological world on all levels functions on the basis of energy capture, processing, and transfer, the base being the individual or species.

10. Energy Flow • Variety of factors that affect this energy flow. One as you will see is behavior! • So we may talk about behavior, really are talking about affecting the flow of energy through animals. • Animal Behavior then are those actions that an animal performs to maintain energy flow! (either in itself or the population)

11. Energy flow • The study of animal behavior is the analysis and cataloging of those actions (behaviors) AND trying to understand how they aid in the individual’s survival (energy flow). • Much of what they do, depends on the energy available. • To understand behavior, we need to understand energy flow!

12. Energy flow • So before we get into aspects of behavior, need to review, from an energy standpoint,

13. Energy flow • The first step is to look at just how much or different types of energy machines there are in the world. • We then need to ask, why are there so many or so few? • Or basically, what are the base factors that affect how much energy is available to a species

14. Energy and behaivor • Once we know that, we can then ask what are the behaviors that influence the use of this energy flow. • So, to start with, how much energy is flowing through species or… just how many species are there?

15. How much energy is flowing or many species are there? 9,150 X 1000 Species of “animals” All of them “behaving”!! # species x 1000.

16. So 13,600,000 species plus or minus – 9-10 million animals ! Why so many? Why doesn’t just one animal type work the best? Are they uniformly distributed? If not, why? And if not, how could this affect their behavior?

17. What controls energy flow? • First step is to understand what affects energy flow. • Abiotic • Biotic factors

18. Abiotic Controls of energy flow • Abiotic Disturbance • Fire, hurricanes, wind, earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, freezing rain, lightning, tree fall gap etc. • Climate • Soil • Variation and distribution of microclimates • Salinity, Turbidity, Tides (aquatic)

19. How does climate impact Energy?

21. How come so many and not distributed uniformly? • Energy machines. • Energy comes from the sun. • Represent different methods for trapping energy under different conditions. • So… the conditions to trap energy are different over the planet! • This will affect a species anatomy, physiology AND behavior!

22. Why different conditions?? Earth is a ball!! And is not directly facing the sun!

23. The amount of energy received changes with the seasons.

24. More energy at the equator. • Changes in other places as rotate around sun. • What is the result of all this?

25. here • Obvious, less energy in polar areas - Seasons (periods of cold in north and south) • So areas of high diversity would be in the tropics, more energy!! • But it is not all! This ball at an angle to the sun causes profound interactions.

26. Climatic

27. What is result? • Bands of different precipitation and temperature. • Bands of different groups of energy machines, Ecosystems.

28. Few examples: Humid hot tropical forest Hot Wet

29. Tropical Dry forests.

30. Tropical grasslands

31. Deserts

32. Temperate grasslands

33. Temperate shurblands

34. Temperate forests

35. Boreal Forests

36. Tundra

37. Nice general pattern but not uniform. Why? Bodies of water.

39. Impact of bodies of water on temperature and precipitation Lake effect snow produced as cold winds blow clouds over warm waters

40. Ocean currents.

41. Mountains

43. Islands of cool and moist conditions.

44. Impact of slope and aspect

45. Principal air currents on planet

46. Impact of mountains on regional climate

47. Soils.

50. Result Each area has a basic biodiversity based on all these conditions. • Where it is in the planet. • Local conditions • History!??? Disturbances.