Behavioral Ecology

Question 1

What is a behavior?

Answer 1

nervous system’s response to a stimulus and is carried out by the muscular or the hormonal system
subject to natural selection and have a genetic basis

Question 2

What are the behavioral traits of a fly reproducting?

Answer 2

Orienting, Tapping, and Singing all have a genetic basis, and each fly has a different “go-to” move
Males lacking the gene don’t court females, and females that get injected with the gene does one of the three methods.

Question 3

What are other types of behaviors that are studied by biologists?

Answer 3

migration, daily rhythms, communication, learning, and predator avoidance

Question 4

What is foraging?

Answer 4

food obtaining behavior, includes recognizing, searching for, capturing, and eating food items

Question 5

What is mate choice?

Answer 5

the act of choosing a reproductive partner

Question 6

What is social behavior?

Answer 6

Interactions with kin and conspecifics

Question 7

What were the questions that Niko Tinbergen identified about animal behavior?

Answer 7

• 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?

Question 8

What is behavioral ecology?

Answer 8

The study of the ecological and evolutionary basis for animal behavior

Question 9

Do crows display optimal foraging behavior?

Answer 9

Trade-off between energy gained (the mollusks) and the energy expended (amount of times having to drop the shell)
*if a behavior enhances survival and reproductive success in a population, it should tend towards optimal levels

Question 10

Explain trade-offs

Answer 10

High growth = advantages of body size
High reproduction = advantages of birth rate
Animals must allocate energy to one or the other

Question 11

What are mating systems?

Answer 11

mating relationships shaped by natural selection

Question 12

What is monogamy?

Answer 12

one male mates with one female
typically have similar external morphologies

Question 13

What is polygamy?

Answer 13

an individual of one sex mates with several individuals of the other sex

Question 14

What is polygyny?

Answer 14

a form of polygamy were one male mates with many females
males are usually more showy and larger than females

Question 15

What is polyandry?

Answer 15

a form of polygamy where one female mates with many males
females are more showy
better for females= many male parents

Question 16

Explain how multiple different mating behaviors occur in lizards

Answer 16

orange- males are the most aggressive and defend large territories
blue- defend small territories
yellow- mimic females, but use sneaky strategies to mate
The success of each strategy depends on the frequency of all the strategies; drives frequency dependent selection.

Question 17

What is cooperation?

Answer 17

even though natural selection favors selfish behaviors, animals cooperate when there is a direct mutual fitness benefit, such as group defense and hunting in groups

Question 18

What is altruism and how does it make sense?

Answer 18

Animals behave in ways that reduce their individual fitness but increase the fitness of others
ex: ants, bees sacrifice their lives to protect their queen

Question 19

What are the different ways social behaviors influence their fitness?

Answer 19

direct fitness- effect of allele on individual bearing it
indirect fitness- effect of copies of the same allele on other individuals
inclusive fitness- an allele is comprised of both its direct and indirect fitness

Question 20

When will an altruistic trait evolve? (the Hamilton rule)

Answer 20

If the cost of the trait to the actor is lower than the benefit to the recipient times the relatedness between actor and recipient
r*b(recepient) - c(actor) >0
r is relatedness from 0-1

Question 21

What is the coefficient of relatedness (r)?

Answer 21

r is the fraction of genes that are shared on average
r is the summation of (0.5)^L , where L is the number of generation links between the individuals

Question 22

Why does kin selection is selection based on inclusive fitness?

Answer 22

*explains cooperation between relatives
* explains conflict in groups of unrelated individuals
* explains why meerkats make risky alarm calls (only live in family groups)

Question 23

What is the evolution of social behaviors governed by?