2. Studying Animal Behaviour

Question 1

Where did ethologists side on the nature vs nurture debate?

Answer 1

1. Ethologists sided with nature.
2. They began each study with a sit and watch phase
3. The ethologist Konrad Lorenz believed every species has an innate set of typical behaviours called fixed action patterns
4. These are initiated by a specific stimulus in the environment
5. Once initiated, the behaviour pattern must be completed

Question 2

Provide two examples of fixed action patterns.

Answer 2

1. When any round object is rolled from a goose’s nest, the goose’s neck extends to bring back “egg”
2. The evolutionary biologist David Lack experimented on robins, which are very territorial
3. They have a stereotypical threat display
4. Lack placed parts of robins around a school and found that there was no aggression where no red breast was present, but just red breast led to aggression
5. Red is a sign stimulus

Question 3

Which side did behaviourists take in the nature vs nurture debate?

Answer 3

1. Behaviourists took the side of nurture
2. They entered the lab straight-away for experiments
3. They were uninterested in immeasurable concepts eg. the mind and cognition
4. Used model species under controlled conditions to measure effects of conditioning behaviour

Question 4

Describe the conditioning experiments carried out by behaviourists on Little Albert.

Answer 4

1. Watson and Rayner studied fear conditioning in baby Albert
2. Albert played with white rats, and a bar was struck behind his head to condition fear
3. Repeated until intense feat displayed.
4. Initially afraid to touch rats, then became frightened on sight (Watson and Rayner, 1920).
5. Also afraid of rabbits, dogs and fur coats, and suspicious of white hair and cotton wool (Watson and Rayner, 1920).
6. Albert was not deconditioned, but showed loss of fear intensity over time (Watson and Rayner, 1920).
7. This was unethical and would not be allowed today.

Question 5

What is the current scientific stance on the nature vs nurture debate?

Answer 5

1. The methods of behaviourism and ethology led to different conclusions that lie on different ends of the spectrum of behaviour
2. There was a poor view of genetics at the time as DNA helix discovery (1953) was recent
3. Scientists believe debate is unhelpful and out of date but it continues, especially with humans.

Question 6

What are the different ends of the behavioural spectrum, and how do these relate to the nature/nurture concepts?

Answer 6

1. “Nature” behaviour is more genetic, with innate behaviours being inherited
2. This is useful in species with short life-spans where parental care is poor (Manning, 1998).
3. “Nurture” behaviour is environmental, and is shaped by environmental factors.
4. This is common in species with long lives that show good levels of parental care eg. African elephants (Manning, 1998).
5. The spectrum in between is influenced by genetic predisposition and environmental triggers
6. The environment can influence gene expression eg. zebra finch chicks lacking food have abnormal songs
7. The study of birdsong in the 1950s helped in reaching this conclusion

Question 7

How do twin studies help in pinpointing the location of a behaviour on the spectrum?

Answer 7

1. Participants have same genes and different/same environments
2. the MaTCH study was a meta-analysis of 14.5 million sets of twins - identical and non-identical
3. Traits averaged about 49% heredity - this different between traits
4. The most hereditary trait was eyes, and the least was social behaviour

Question 8

How do adoption studies help in pinpointing the location of a behaviour on the spectrum?

Answer 8

1. Different genes but same environment

2. eg. split-clutch experiments in which chicks/eggs may be swapped and adopted by another parent, along with own chicks

Question 9

How do isolation studies help in pinpointing the location of a behaviour on the spectrum?

Answer 9

1. Young are isolated, then their responses to certain stimuli are studied (Manning, 1998).
2. Mallard ducklings must hear mallard calls of other chicks from inside shell to learn appropriate responses (Manning, 1998).

Question 10

What is behavioural epigenetics? Give an example of a behavioural epigenetic study.

Answer 10

1. Genes and environment may have permanent interactions.
2. If a rat shows good maternal parental care, there is less methylation of the DNA of pups
3. This influences the pups to grow to be better parents (Weaver et al., 2004).

Question 11

Were ultimate or proximate questions the focus of animal behaviour research until the 1970s? Why?

Answer 11

1. Nature-nurture debate encouraged promixate focus

2. Ultimate research was lacking because early ethologists made no distinction between individual and group selection

Question 12

Why did Vero Wynne-Edwards push for group selection, and why was group selection eventually abandoned??

Answer 12

1. He argued that red grouse compete for territory, not food
2. Males with territories breed, others don’t
3. Territorial behaviour regulated the population, so population requirements didn’t exceed the food available
4. Populations that don’t over-exploit resources are more successful
5. However, group selection isn’t evolutionarily stable and in the 1960s the focus moved to Darwinian selection
6. This was in pat due to two books called Adaptation and Natural Selection AND Population Studies of Brids

Question 13

When and how did behavioural ecology emerge as a discipline?

Answer 13

1. In the 1960s and 70s, ultimate research became the focus
2. These explanations of behaviour relied on individual/Darwinian selection
3. Theoretical advances led to new sub-disciplines eg. Game theory and evolution (John Maynard Smith) and Animal territoriality (Jerram Brown)
4. There was more focus on the adaptive value of behaviours than previously

Question 14

What were the criticisms of behavioural ecology?

Answer 14

1. Critics called it story telling
2. Believed the scientists assumed species’ traits were adaptive and ignored potential importance of randomness and other mechanisms
3. Fitness implications of a trait must be proven before you can assume the trait is adaptive
4. “The Spandrels of San Marco” was a paper by Gould and Lewontin that argued some traits are not adaptations but may have a function, like the spandrels that display art.

Question 15

What are the traps that must be avoided when studying animal behaviour?

Answer 15

1. Don’t attribute an adaptive function to a trait without evidence
2. Test alternative hypotheses to find fitness consequences of actions
3. Avoid anthropomorphism eg. facial expressions in primates
4. Human perception may differ from animal perception eg. spectrum of light visible may differ, so male and female colouration of Pieris rapae butterfly is same to us buy different to them

Question 16

How should you perform an animal behaviour study?

Answer 16

1. Choose a question and identify study system/form hypotheses about available system - hypotheses should test proximate and ultimate causes
2. Comprise an ethogram, usually partial as full are very challenging, to find out what species does
3. Choose what data you will record: events or states
4. This choice depends on your question, knowledge of the animals, ease of observation and method of analysis

Question 17

What is ad-libitum sampling?

Answer 17

1. Record individual/group behaviour
2. No specific method
3. Good for initial observations and formation of research questions
4. Quantity and quality of data limited

Question 18

What is focal animal sampling?

Answer 18

1. Observation of one individual
2. Can record all behaviours or all instances of specific behaviour(s) in time period
3. More reproducible than ad-libitum

Question 19

What is all occurrence sampling?

Answer 19

1. Records one or more specific behavioural events
2. Withing a group of animals
3. Helps determine rate, frequency and synchrony of specific behaviours

Question 20

What is one-zero/binary sampling?

Answer 20

1. Records if behaviour did (1) or did not (0) occur during set time of individual/group observation
2. Does not consider how many times behaviour occurred
3. Information lost by categorisation
4. Easily analysed and quantifiable

Question 21

What is scan sampling?

Answer 21

1. Record activity/state of all individuals at set intervals
2. Useful to understand frequency
3. Useful to study all animal groups

Question 22

How has one study involving mice demonstrated the complexity of the genetic-environmental continuum?

Answer 22

1. Study by Okanoya et al., 2011.
2. Mice can emit strain specific, ultrasonic songs
3. When mice taken and raised in different strain groups, it became clear there was a genetic component, but overall results were inconclusive.