animal behaviour Flashcards
what is a behaviour
‘The most observable response that an animal gives to a stimuli.’
what is a stimuli
Events that cause an organism to perform an activity or start a reaction’
what are social behaviours
interaction (directed behaviours) to another individuals
example of social behaviour
penguins doing aloe grooming on each other’s faces
what are foraging behaviours
set pattern that a species uses to locate and identify food
example of foraging behaviour
ducks feeding on fish
what is animal welfare
‘The state of an individual as it attempts to cope with its environment’ (Broom, 1986).
pure aspects of animal behaviuour
• Evolutionary biology. o Macaque monkeys • Behavioural ecology. o How does the environment shape the behaviours animals perform to get benefits • Cognition and consciousness. • Human and animal comparisons.
what is Ad libitum sample
• Ad libitum – All behaviours are recorded.
what is Focal sample
• Focal – Focus on one individual.
what is a Scan sample
• Scan – Scan group at regular intervals. Assume everyone in the group is doing the same thing. Count number of times it is being performed
what is a Behavioural sample
• Behavioural – Record occurrence of a particular behaviour
what is Continuous recording
• Continuous – Exact record of behaviour as records each occurrence.
o Most difficult but most accurate
what is Instantaneous recording
• Instantaneous – Divide sample period into short intervals and record behaviour on the time point.
o Most common form of sampling. Easiest method to record experimental noise
what is • One-Zero recording
• One-Zero – Record whether behaviour has occurred in sample period.
o Rare behaviour (e.g. only at particular points in the day)
o Have a spreadsheet, put zero when you don’t see the behaviour and one when you do
o E.g. flamingos. Hard to count individual birds. Break time into minutes, if you see display in first minute you give a one.
what is • Frequency
• Frequency – The number of occurrences of the behaviour per unit of time
what is • Duration
• Duration – The length of time for which a single occurrence of the behaviour lasts
what is • Latency
• Latency – The time from a specific stimuli to the first occurrence of the behaviour. How long does the stimuli last for. How long does it take to be performed?
what is • Bout
• Bout – A short period of a specific activity, normally intense, that can be timed. Will have a specific start and end point and a latency between bouts is required for measurement. Difficult to time or happen quick
what happens in time-activity budgets
- Proportion of behaviours displayed during the study period.
- E.g. a group of pigs watched for 5hours. – 15% of the time was spent foraging. – 20% of time was spent asleep.
- Express graphically to show how individuals expend energy on behaviour (and therefore shows us importance of each activity).
Whenever there is a group average, you don’t know who is who, you MUST put…
error bars
Best if behavioural observation (daily activity patterns) have occurred …
during day and night
Behaviour has evolved alongside …
Behaviour has evolved alongside environmental constraints to make the animal better adapted to the environment. Must justify why behaviours occur in the introduction
you should always…
- … run a pilot study.
- …read papers detailing a similar species or similar research question before you start.
- …construct your ethogram before you begin.
- …base methods on precedent
you should not..
- …continue using a sampling protocol that is not generating useful or valid data.
- …assume that you need hours and hours and hours of data to collect accurate information on specific aspects of animal behaviour.
- …however don’t think that behaviour is an easy thing to research. Quality data are better than quantity. So be repeatable and accurate.
what is pseudoreplication
the behaviour change seen has been inflated. An artefact of research protocol
good stats to use on beahvioural data
t-test
