Chapter 51 Animal Behavior Notes PDF

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Chapter 51 Animal Behavior Notes- Doebel...

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Chapter 51 Concept 51.1: Discrete sensory inputs can stimulate both simple and complex behaviors 1. What stimulus elicits the behavior, and what physiological mechanisms mediate the response? Proximate causation- how a behavior occurs or is modified 2. How does the animal’s experience during growth and development influence the response? Why a behavior occurs 3. How does the behavior aid survival and reproduction? 4. What is the behavior’s evolutionary history? Fixed Action Patterns ● Tinbergen: studied stickleback fish ○ Males have red bellies and attack other males that invade their nesting territories ○ Behave aggressively when see red, thus the red is the proximate cause of the attack behavior ● Fixed action pattern: a sequence of unlearned acts directly linked to a simple stimulus ○ essentially unchangeable and, once initiated, are usually carried to completion ● Sign stimulus: external cue to trigger the behavior such as a red object that prompts the male stickleback’s aggressive behavior Migration ● Some animals track position relative to the sun and adjust changing positions with circadian clock (internal mechanism that maintains a 24 hour activity rhythm) ○ Birds orient differently relative to the sun at distinct times of the day. ○ Nocturnal animals can instead use the North Star, which has a constant position in the night sky. ○ pigeons sense their position relative to Earth’s magnetic field and can thereby navigate without solar or celestial cues Behavioral Rhythms ● Circadian clock has major role in daily activity of all animals ● normally synchronized with the light and dark cycles of the environment but can maintain rhythmic activity even during hibernation ● Linked to yearly cycle of seasons called circannual rhythms ● Influenced by periods of light and darkness ● Not all though, ex: male’s claw-waving courtship behavior is linked to the timing of the new and full moon ○ Helps development of offspring Animal Signals and Communication Signal: stimulus transmitted from one organism to another ● Claw waving by fiddler crabs during courtship is an example of one animal (the male crab) generating the stimulus that guides the behavior of another animal (the female crab) Forms of Animal Communication ● 4 modes of fruit fly: visual, chemical, tactile, and auditory ○ Constitutes a stimulus response chain ● Form of communication that evolves is closely related to an animal’s lifestyle and environment.

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For example, most terrestrial mammals are nocturnal, which makes visual displays relatively ineffective and use olfactory Honeybee: the angle of the straight run relative to the hive’s vertical surface indicates the horizontal angle of the food in relation to the sun. Thus, if the returning bee runs at a 30° angle to the right of vertical, the follower bees leaving the hive fly 30° to the right of the horizontal direction of the sun

51.2 Learning est. specific links between experience and behavior Innate bahvior: behavior that is developmentally fixed ● Ex: fixed action pattern, courtship stimulus response chain, pheromone signaling Experience and Behavior ● Cross-fostering study, in which the young of one species are placed in the care

of adults from another species in the same or a similar environment ○ Expericne can influence nehavior ○ Can be passed onto progeny ○ Twin study: raised apart ● Learning ○ An enviornment can influence behavior through learning ○ Changes neuronal connectivity ● Imprinting ○ establishment of a long-lasting behavioral response to a particular individual or object ○ Sensitive period: imprinting can only take place during a specific time period in development ○ Become importnat to sae engangered species ● Spatial Learning and Cognitive Maps ○ Spatial: the establishment of a memory that reflects the environment’s spatial structure ■ Ex: digger wasps ○ Cognitive map: a representation in an animal’s nervous system of the spatial relationships between objects in its surroundings ■ Ex: clarks nutcracker hide pine seeds for retrieval in the winter Associative Learning ● Making associations between experiences ○ Ex: blue jays avoid monarchs and other looking butterflies ● Classical conditioning: arbitrary stimulus associated w outcome ● Operant conditioning: trial and error where animals learns to associate a behavior with a reward or punishment Social Learning ● Learning through others

○ Ex: young chimps learn to crack open nuts by copying experienced chimps ○ Vervet monkeys learn how to respond to alarm calls and correct use ● Culture: formed by social learning 51.3 Selection for individual survival and reproductive success can explain diverse behaviors ● Foraging: includes not only eating but also any activities an animal uses to search for, recognize, and capture food items Evolution of foraging behavior ● Seen in flies, larvae at low density foraged over shorter distances while opposite ● Optimal foraging model: natural selection should favor a foraging behavior that minimizes the costs of foraging and maximizes the benefits Balancing Risk and Reward ● One of the most potential costs to forager is risk of predation ● Ex: mule deer: feed predominantly in open areas rather than forested areas Mating Behavior and choice ● Polygamous: mating with several of other gender ○ Polygyny: single male and many females ○ Polyandry: single female and many males ● Secual dimorphism: extent to which F and M differ in appearance ○ Among monogamous, both look similar Mating Systems and Parental Care ● Birds may be monogamous because need large continuous food supply that’s hard for 1 parent to meet ● In mammalliam species, the lactating female is only food source and males protect ● Certainty of paternity: males that engage in internal fertilization increase guarding behavior ○ Egg laying: external fertilization (fish, amphibians) Mate Choice ● Can also be influenced by imprining ○ Zebra finches: females chose non ornamented males while males had no preference (F take cues from fathers) ● Mate choice copying: behavior in which individuals in a population copy the mate choice of others ○ Ex: guppy- with no other females present female almost always chooses one with more orange coloration ○ If female observed the model courting with less orange, it would copy ○ Form of social leaning Male competition for mates ● Agonistic behavior: often-ritualized contest that determines which competitor

gains access to a resource, such as food or a mate ○ Results in low variation among males Applying Game Theory ● evaluates alternative strategies in situations where the outcome depends on the strategies of all the individuals involved ○ Ex: side blotched lizard- why do they have 3 different colored necks? ■ Orange are most aggressive and devend large territories that contain many males ■ Blue-throat males are also territorial but defend smaller territories and fewer females. ■ Yellow-throats are non territorial males that mimic females and use “sneaky” tactics to gain the chance to mate. ○ Mating success is influenced by relative abundance of other types (frequency dependent selection) 51.4 Genetic analyses and the concept of inclusive fitness provide a basis for studying the evolution of behavior

Genetic Basis of behavior ● Fru gene: in inactive form, males do not court or mate ○ Normal male and female express distinct forms of the fru gene ○ Females can be genetically manipulated to express the male form of fru and court other females ○ Its a master regulatory gene that directs the expression and activity of many genes with narrower functions ○ Brings about sex specific development ○ Behavior arise from variation in the activity or amount of a gene product ● Male meadow voles: do not form long lasting relationships with mates ● Male prairie voles: form pair bond with a single female ○ ADH: peptide is released during mating and binds to a specific receptor in the central nervous system ○ Prairie voles require this to form pair bonds Case Study: variation in Prey Selection ● Coastal populations feed predominantly on banana slugs ● Inland feed on frogs, leeches and fish but not banana slugs (rare in inland) ○ Why? Slug is genetically acquired taste ○ More than 10,000 years ago snakes could recognize slugs from scent Case Study: variation in Migratory patterns ● Blackcap warbler: wintering adult birds in caught in Britain migrated west ● Birds caught in germany migrated SW ● This indicates different orientations have a genetic basis Altruism ● describe a behavior that reduces an animal’s individual fitness but increases the

fitness of other individuals in the population ○ Ex: gound squirrel- if it sees a predator gives off alarm call, but increases risk of being killed ○ Homeybees- workers never reproduce and work on behalf of single female, also workers sting intruders resulting in their death ○ Naked mole rates: one reproducing female and rest protect Inclusive Fitness ● the total effect an individual has on proliferating its genes by producing its own offspring and by providing aid that enables other close relatives to produce offspring ● Like parents and offspring siblings have half their genes in common Hamilton's Rule and Kin Selection ● three key variables in an act of altruism are the benefit to the recipient, the cost to the altruist, and the coefficient of relatedness ● coefficient of relatedness, r, equals the fraction of genes that, on average, are shared. ● Natural selection favors altruism when the benefit to the recipient multiplied by the coefficient of relatedness exceeds the cost to the altruist—in other words, when rB > C. This statement is called Hamilton’s rule ● Kin selection: Natural selection that thus favors altruism by enhancing the reproductive success of relatives ○ Weakens with hereditary distance Reciprocal Altruism ● Some animals occasionally behave altruistically toward others who are not relatives ○ Baboon may help an unrelated companion in a fight, or a wolf may offer food to another wolf even though they share no kinship ● Tit for tat...