Animal Behavior

Question 0

Proximate cause

Answer 0

How a behavior happens. What triggers the behavior? Does the behavior change with time?

Question 1

Behavior

Answer 1

Response to a stimulus

Question 2

Ultimate cause

Answer 2

Wy a behavior happens. Effect on fitness.

Question 3

Fixed action patterns

Answer 3

Once initiated they run to completion. Inflexible, almost no variation. Species specific. Set off by a release stimulus or released stimuli.

Question 4

Classical conditioning

Answer 4

Think of Pavlov’s dog.

Question 5

Imprinting

Answer 5

This type of learning is fast and irreversible. I occurs during a ritual time window. Think of baby gees and thinking the first thing they see is their mother.

Question 6

Spatial learning

Answer 6

Organisms learn to recognize landmarks to navigate.

Question 7

Mistake based learning

Answer 7

Make a mistake and learn from it. Pretty straightforward.

Question 8

Cognition

Answer 8

Recognition and manipulation of facts about the world. The ability to gain concepts and insights. Example: crows making and using tools in the wild. Introduced to a novel environment in a lab with the necessary objects to use as tools for say getting to food, they will figure it out. The octopus has even shown observational learning. By watching another octopus work on getting prey out of a jar and figuring it out, the observing octopus will already know how to use the jar when given the chance.

Question 9

In at behaviors are linked to

Answer 9

Situations where mistakes are costly

Question 10

Learned behaviors are generally linked to

Answer 10

Situations where one can make mistakes that aren’t life threatening.

Question 11

Deception in communication

Answer 11

Cn be both inter and intra species specific. To persist this adaptation must be rare. For example the anglerfish. Or the deceiving firefly

Question 12

Three types of migration.

Answer 12

Piloting compass and bicoordinate

Question 13

Piloting

Answer 13

Use of visual references to guide oneself.

Question 14

Compass navigation

Answer 14

Using the sun, stars, or earths magnetic field

Question 15

Bi-coordinate navigation

Answer 15

True navigation. Compass plus knowing where you are. Example is the wandering albatross

Question 16

Altruism

Answer 16

Behavior that imparts a cost to self and benefits another

Question 17

Kin selection

Answer 17

Altruism occurs if cost is less than benefit to relatedness. Hamiltons rule states that if the benefit is great than the cost the behavior will persist. Br > C . Think of social insects and the prarie dog example.

Question 18

Eusociality

Answer 18

Altruism in groups that have sterile individuals. Common in social insect lines. Females in a colony are more closely related to each other than siblings would be in most cases.

Question 19

Reciprocal altruism

Answer 19

Self sacrificing behavior with unrelated individuals, most common between individuals with a past history of altruism. Think of vampire bats.