Animal Behaviour Flashcards
Animal behaviour
What an organism does and how it does it, usually in response to stimuli in its environment. Diverse, can be characteristic of a species and also individual variation, learning and culture.
What is animal behaviour studied for?
Animal welfare, animal husbandry, conservation, public interest, pivotal role, promotes higher level of organisation and has a critical role in adaptations and evolution
Natural selection
Behaviour is the product of natural selection on phenotypes and indirectly on genotypes that code for them. Have a set of adaptations
Tinbergen’s four whys?
Causation - proximate factors initiating behaviour
Development - genetics and learning
Evolution - how it evolved from ancestral phenotypes
Function - how behaviour contributes to survival
Proximate causation
Mechanisms underlying behaviour - comparative psychology
Ultimate causation
evolution, selection pressures, ethology and behavioural ecology
Biological communication
The action of one organism alters the probability pattern of behaviour of another - adaptive to either of both and sender must intend to alter the other’s behaviour
Why communicate?
Not in isolation
Interactions between heterospecifics and conspecifics
Mating
Heterogenous landscapes - aggregations and non-random associations between individuals
Social interactions
Sender
Transmits signals
Receiver
Individual who’s probability of behaving in a certain way is altered by the signal
Signal
Any behaviour or feature that conveys information from sender to receiver
Display
A signal involving behaviour patterns adapted to function as a social signal
Channel
A medium through which the signal is transmitted
Context
The setting in which the signal is transmitted and received
e.g. lion roar to neighbouring prides/own pride
Noise
Irrelevant background activity
True communication
Both sender and receiver benefit
Ignoring (spite)
Both sender and receiver do not benefit/-ve
Eavesdropping (exploitation)
Sender -ve and receiver benefits
Manipulation (deceit)
Sender benefits, receiver doesn’t benefit/-ve
Discrete signals
All or none
Graded signals
Intensity varies in proportion to stimulus strength
Afferential
Communicates info about sender
Referential
Communicates info about an entity external to communicating individual
Composite signals
2 or more signals combined give a new meaning
Syntax
Changing the sequence of displays
Metacommunication
One display alters subsequent e.g. play bow in canids
Message
What the signal encodes about the sender
Meaning
What the receiver construes from the signal
Reducing the risk of eavesdropping
Difficult to detect or locate signals e.g. 7Hz freq
Cant tell direction of birdsong
Signals selectively unavailable to repudiators
Direct to specific individuals
Audience effects
Presence of a particular onlooker can make behaviours more or less likely
What makes a good signal?
How well situated signal is to being detected in receiver’s environment: detectability, discriminability, memorability, specific and unambiguous
Stereotypy
Ritualisation of displays
Antithesis
Signals conveying opposite messages often have opposite forms e.g. threat/submissive postures of dogs
Sensory channel
The physical form used to transmits signals from sender to receiver - depends upon machinery available to individual, environment, evolutional josyoru
Strategies to reduce degradation of signal
In forests = low fre1, avoid trills
In open terrain = trills favoured, repeated elements
What behaviours did displays evolve from?
Intention movements
Displacement activities - where animal is undecided to appropriate response
Physiological change
Thermoregulatory behaviours
Food changes - Comparisons of closely related species
Elaboration of functional behaviours
Inter-specific signals
Predator deterrence and co-evolution
Group spacing and co-ordination
Distance increasing
Distance maintaining
Distance reducing
Proximity maintaining
Recognition
Species recognition - avoids infertile matings, courtship
Deme recognition
Neighbour recognition - no aggressive response upon familiar individuals
Kin recognition - parent-offspring
Individual recognition - dolphin whistles
Alarm
Alerts groups to danger e.g. Veret monkeys have different signals for different predators
Finding food
Advantage of group living - increased foraging efficiency, signals aid exploitation/acquisition of food but typically selfish
Giving and soliciting care
Begging and offering food between parent and offspring of among relatives. Distress all by young and soliciting play
Aggression
Any activity directed towards to discomfiture of another individual
Agonistic behaviour
Behaviour patterns used during conflict with a conspecific
Causes of conflict
Limited resources, heterogenous environment, patchy resources, aggressions of individuals
Resolving conflict
Ritualised displays decided whether to quit or continue to fight as they give info about the individuals fitness
Why are physical fights rare?
Potential high cost of energy and risk of injury, selection favours evolution of conflict resolution mechanisms, most conflict avoided y display
Avoiding conflict
Maintaining social space (territories), appeasement and submission (dominance relationships), pre-fight displays, fights are a last resort.
Escalation of conflicts
Conflict most likely when opponents equally matched. One often prepared to persist longer or escalate further as it has more to gain from winning e.g. hunger, thirst; perceived resource value, may lead to evolution of signals ownership
Conflict and eavesdropping
Observing encounters between other combatants may affect the observer’s behaviour in subsequent encounters
Conflict signals and honesty
Cant lie about dominance due to costs - development of mass and weaponry, social ‘policing’
Sexual selection
Compete successful for mating opportunities - aid competition within 1 sex for access to the other and enhancing attractiveness off individuals of one sex to members of the other (pre-copulatory)
Secondary sexual characteristics
Females invest more are costly large gametes - must pick good quality males
Males invest less - uncertainty of paternity = less choosy
Male-male competition (intra-sexual)
Courtship displays (inter-sexual)
May conflict with survival e.g. antlers energetically expensive and bright plumage conspicuous to predators
Functions of courtship
Species, deme, class and individual recognition
Mate attraction and choice
Coordination of reproductive behaviours and physiology between sexes
Maintain long term bonds and coordinate provision for offspring
Mate attraction
Means by which males can be compared by females, More complex songs and stamina preferred - healthier, possessing better territories, enhanced parenting potential and good gene - honest signals of male quality. Courtship displays may also involved additional material e.g. nest building, nuptial gifts
Deception
e.g Femme fatale firefly flashes patterns with photogenic abdomen but can also mimic smaller species - prey. Caused co-evolution where males perform prey species patterns then switch back too mate
Complex communication
e.g. food location in honey bees - waggle dance: direction of food rel. to sun = direction relative to gravity,. Duration increases with distance, 1 waggle = 30m
Language acquisition
Limited resource of signals - e.g. human lang unbounded set bases on 20-60 phonemes. True language: symbols for abstract ideas, syntax, displaced functional reference.
