Animal Behavior and Ecology Quiz

Unit 8: Ecology - Animal Behavior

• Organisms respond to their environment through behaviors and physiology.
• A stimulus is an external signal that causes a response.
• Tropisms are displayed by plants, showing growth toward (positive) or away from (negative) a stimulus.
  • Examples include positive phototropism (growth toward light) and gravitropism (growth toward gravity).
• Taxis is displayed in animals, involving behavior directed toward or away from something.
• Kinesis is displayed in animals, involving random movement.
• Signals allow communication between organisms, benefiting survival and reproduction.
• Communication signals include visual (like aposematic coloration in poisonous creatures), tactile, audible, and electrical signals.
• Animals use chemical signals (pheromones) to mark territory and attract mates.
• Animal communication can indicate dominance, find food, and establish territory.
• Groups of animals often cooperate to ensure the survival of the group at large.
• Innate behaviors are genetically determined and occur without prior experience (examples include instincts and reflexes).
• Learned behaviors develop through experience.

Unit 8: Ecology - Animal Behavior - Learned Behaviors

• Animal behavior is action carried out by muscles under the control of the nervous system.
• Behaviors are essential for animal survival and reproduction.
• Animal behavior is subject to natural selection.
• Behavioral ecology studies the ecological and evolutionary basis for animal behavior.
• Behaviors include responses to both simple and complex stimuli.
• According to Niko Tinbergen, to understand animal behavior, one must answer the following:
  • What stimulus elicits the behavior?
  • How does the animal's experience influence the behavior?
  • How does the behavior aid survival and reproduction?
  • What is the behavior's evolutionary history?
• Proximate causation explains how a behavior occurs or is modified.
• Ultimate causation explains why a behavior occurs in an evolutionary context.
• Fixed Action Patterns (FAPs) are unlearned, instinctive behaviors triggered by specific stimuli.
• Fixed Action Patterns are commonly observed in animals like male sticklebacks.
• Sign stimuli are external cues that trigger behaviors.
• Migration is a regular, long-distance change in location.
• Animals use various cues such as the sun, stars, or Earth's magnetic field for navigation.
• Behavioral rhythms are cyclical behaviors like circadian (sleep-wake) and circannual rhythms.
• Animals communicate through signals, including visual, chemical, tactile, and auditory signals.
• Signal: stimulus transmitted from one organism to another
• Communication: the transmission and reception of signals between animals
• There are four main types of animal communication: visual, chemical, tactile, auditory.
• Pheromones are chemical signals that animals use for communication.
• Pheromones may influence many behaviors like marking territories, attracting mates and finding food for example.
• Learning establishes links between experience and behavior, including cross-fostering studies.
• Several learning types were mentioned, including spatial learning (establishment of memory about environmental structure) and associative learning (making associations between environmental factors).

Unit 8: Ecology - Animal Cognition

• Cognition involves awareness, reasoning, recollection, and judgment.
• Problem-solving is a complex form of cognitive activity.
• Social learning is learning by observing others which forms the roots of culture.

Unit 8: Ecology - Population Ecology

• Population is a group of individuals of the same species living in the same area and frequently interacting.
• Population size relates to food availability, reproduction, and survival rates.
• Populations have different adaptations for dealing with lack of resources
• Population growth, expressed as dN/dt, considers factors such as birth rate (B), death rate (D), immigration (I), and emigration (E).
  • Exponential growth occurs when resources are unlimited.
  • Logistic growth, also displayed by population size over time, occurs when resources are limited to a given carrying capacity.
  • rmax is the maximum per capita growth rate, or intrinsic rate of increase.
  • K is the carrying capacity, or the maximum population size the environment can sustain.
• Population sizes vary over time and space.
• Demographic studies examine birth, death, and migration rates to understand populations’ characteristics.

Unit 8: Ecology - Energy Flow

• Organisms use energy to grow, maintain homeostasis, and reproduce.
• Endothermic organisms (warm-blooded) maintain stable internal temperatures using metabolic processes.
• Ectothermic organisms (cold-blooded) rely on external sources for heat regulation.
• Trophic levels represent the positions of organisms in a food chain or web.
• Autotrophs (producers) make their own food through photosynthesis.
• Heterotrophs (consumers) obtain energy by consuming other organisms.
• Food chains and food webs describe energy flow through ecosystems, highlighting trophic levels of organisms.
• Trophic levels are affected by limiting factors over time.

Unit 8: Ecology - Biodiversity

• Community is a group of different species living in the same area and interacting with each other.
• Species diversity is the variety of species and the number of individuals within each species.
• A high species diversity is correlated with community stability and resilience to disturbances and diseases.
• Species composition details the identity of species within a community.
• Simpson's Index is used to measure community diversity.
• Species diversity is crucial in maintaining healthy ecosystems.
• Interactions among species, including various types of competition, determine the structure of a community, as well as trophic structure.
• Interactions among species may include symbiotic relationships like commensalism, mutualism, and parasitism.
• Keystone species have an unusually large impact on the other organisms in their community.

Unit 8: Ecology - Ecosystem Survival

• Natural and artificial ecosystems are affected by changes in the environment.
• Ecosystem components have different levels of resilience.
• Biotic and abiotic factors maintain ecosystem diversity.
• Invasive species can have a significant negative effect on an ecosystem's dynamics.
• Keystone species have disproportionate effects relative to their abundance, whereas invasive species often have a major effect.
• The distribution of ecosystems changes over time, often due to climate or other environmental changes.