Behavioral Ecology Flashcards
What is a behavior?
A behavior is the nervous system’s response to a stimulus and is carried out by the muscular or the hormonal system.
How is communication defined?
Communication is the transmission and reception of signals between animals.
What controls the mating behavior of flies?
The transcription factor fruitless (fru) has male and female splice variants. This master regulatory gene controls mating behavior.
How does a single gene (fru) control mating behavior in flies?
Males lacking fruM don’t court.
Male splice variants in females can cause sex role reversal (as do female splice variants in males)
What is foraging?
Food-obtaining behavior, includes recognizing, searching for, capturing, and eating food items.
What is mate choice?
The act of choosing a reproductive partner.
What is social behavior?
Interactions with kin and conspecifics (members of the same species).
What four questions did Niko Tinbergen ask about animal behavior?
- What stimulus elicits the behavior, and what physiological mechanisms mediate the response?
- How does the animal’s experience during growth and development influence the response?
- How does the behavior aid survival and reproduction?
- What is the behavior’s evolutionary history?
What is ethology?
The science and study of animal behavior.
What is behavioral ecology?
The study of the ecological and evolutionary basis for animal behavior.
What is a fixed action pattern?
A sequence of unlearned acts that are directly linked to an external cue called a sign stimulus.
What is migration?
A regular, long-distance change in location guided by environmental cues. Animals can orient themselves through unfamiliar territory using their position relative to the sun, the North Star, and earth’s magnetic field.
What is foraging behavior?
Foraging behavior includes all the methods by which an organism acquires and utilizes sources of energy and nutrients.
What is the tradeoff animals must make to maximize fitness?
There is a tradeoff between high growth (advantages of body size) and high reproduction (advantages of birth rate). Animals must allocate energy to one or the other.
What is monogamy?
One male mates with one female. Males and females typically have similar external morphologies.
What is polygamy?
An individual of one sex mates with several individuals of the other sex.
What is polygyny?
A form of polygamy where one male mates with many females. Males are usually more show and larger than the females.
What is polyandry?
A form of polygamy where one female mates with many males. Females are often more showy than the males.
What does the type of mating system that occurs depend on?
- Whether 1 or 2 parents can effectively raise offspring.
- Whether mates are clumped or dispersed and can be economically defended.
Describe the mating and frequency dependence of side-blotched lizards.
Males have either an orange, blue, or yellow throat. Each color is associated with a specific strategy for obtaining mates. The success of each strategy depends on the frequencies of all of the strategies; this drives frequency-dependent selection.
What is the strategy of orange-throated side-blotched male lizards?
They are the most aggressive and defend large territories.
What is the strategy of blue-throated side-blotched male lizards?
They defend small territories.
What is the strategy of yellow-throated side-blotched male lizards?
They are non-territorial, mimic females, and use “sneaky” strategies to mate.
How does cooperation occur?
Natural selection favors behaviors that maximize an individual’s survival and reproduction–these behaviors are often selfish. But animals also cooperate when there is a direct mutual fitness benefit, such as in group foraging, group defense, and reproducing in groups.
