Animal Behavior and Ethology Quiz

Animal Behavior

• Animal behavior is the study of an organism's responses to external and internal stimuli, including actions carried out by muscles under nervous system control
• This study is called ethology
• Behavior is essential for energy consumption, reproduction, and homeostasis
• Behavior influences survivability and is subject to natural selection
• Behaviors can be innate (do not require experience) or learned (require experience)

Learning Objectives

• The importance of behavior
• Distinguishing proximate and ultimate causality of behaviors, including examples
• Identifying and explaining fixed action patterns and learning
• Explaining the optimal foraging model
• Differentiating mating systems
• Defining altruistic behaviors
• Discussing kin selection

Proximate Causation

• Question 1: What stimuli trigger behavior?
• Question 2: How does experience influence behavior?
  • Innate and learned responses
  • Combination of nature (genes) and nurture (environment) in shaping learning and behavior
• Innate Behavior
  • Fixed action patterns - unlearned responses to external stimuli
  • Sign stimuli – external triggers for behavior
  • Examples, like the three-spined stickleback
  • Environmental stimuli, such as circadian rhythms and migration
  • Animal communication (visual, chemical, tactile, auditory) – examples include vocalizations, pheromones, and dances
• Learning – experience
  • Modification of behavior based on specific experiences.
  • Examples: Imprinting ( establishment of a long-lasting response to a particular individual or object in a specific time period; sensitive period), spatial learning (memory based on environmental space), associative learning (memory based on associations between experiences), cognitive learning (process of knowing and includes awareness, reasoning, recollection, and judgment), social learning (observed behaviors of other individuals for example, vervet monkeys give specific calls for different predators)

Ultimate Causation

• Question 3: How does behavior affect survival and reproduction?
• Question 4: How has natural selection shaped behavior?
  • Survival and Reproduction
    • Differing foraging strategies affect success
    • Optimal foraging theory
    • Mating behavior and mate choice play a major role in determining reproductive success
    • Mating Systems
      • Variations in mating systems and mate choice lead to different behaviors (e.g., courtship, monogamy, polygamy, parental care)
      • Sexual dimorphism (males and females differ in appearance, differing with mating systems)
      • Monogamous species show similar appearance. Polygamous species (where one sex attracts multiple mates) are typically showier and larger
      • Examples of mating systems in seabirds (long-term pairing, elaborate courtship rituals, extensive parental care in albatrosses)
    • Exception! Crested auklets are bonded for only one breeding season
• Social Behavior
  • Advantages of living in groups – finding food, protection from environmental conditions and predators
  • Disadvantages of living in groups – competition among group members, diseases that spread quickly, and groups being easier to spot by predators
• Kin selection (Altruistic Behaviors)
  • Natural selection that favors traits that enhance the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even at the cost of the individual's own survival and reproduction
  • E.g., alarm calls, non-parent rearing/protection.
• Altruism
  • Why would these behaviors evolve? – fitness includes direct (individual's reproduction) and indirect components (relative's reproduction)
  • Selection that favors the spread of alleles that lead to increased indirect fitness–kin selection
• Example of Kin Selection
  • Eusociality – cooperative groups, usually with only one reproductively active female, where non-breeding individuals care for young or protect the group (e.g., naked mole rats, queens being aggressive to non-relatives)
  • Reciprocal altruism – resource sharing (e.g., blood sharing in vampire bats)

Humpback Whales

• True altruism: behaviors that benefit their own species and other species (from killer whales)