Behavioural Ecology Flashcards
What is behavioural ecology?
Focuses on adaptation to understand how behaviours interacts with an environment
What is “Fitness”
“The success of an organism to contribute offspring to future generations” often measured as number of grandkids
Phenotypic gambit
The assumption that genetic architecture is not constraining or inhibiting evolutionary trajectories
Ultimate questions
Ask about the behaviours significance evolutionarily. e.g. does this behaviour enhance reproductive success
Proximate questions
asks about the immediate cause of a behaviour, could be hormonal, neurological, cognitive or cultural…
Tinbergen’s four questions
Function (adaptation)
Evolution (phylogeny)
Causation (mechanism)
Development (ontogeny)
What are the four ways to test if behaviour is inherited
- correlation between parents and offspring
- cross breeding experiments
- artificial selection experiments
- molecular underpinnings
Benefits of living in groups
- Not as many predators- scare them off
- Foraging
- information/learning
- cooperation
Costs of living in a group
Disease spreads faster
Parasites
Competition if there is not much food
Antipredator benefits
- If you are small you are likely to have a large predator
- one on one there is not a good change
- In a group though, there is lesser risk
*CALLED THE DILUTION OF RISK
Confusion effect
everyone looking the same to confuse the predator on the prey they wanted
Oddity effect
e.g. A zebra with a herd of bison (the zebra would be eaten since they are the ‘oddity’)
Shared vigilance benefits
More eyes on predator, therefore faster detection
Foraging benefits
Looking out for predators on your own if you are not in a group means that you cannot eat. Therefore if you are in a larger group you can share it around and therefore increase foraging time as someone else would stay on lookout
Information and learning
If you cant find food than it can kill you
need to be smart and think about where to get food when living in a group
Local enhancement: “Restaurant effect”
if there is a restaurant with heaps of people we would tend to chose that over one with no one in it, same with animals
Mutually beneficial cooperation
Same as mutualistic symbiotic relationship, it mutually benefits both parties.
Hamilton’s rule for helping
Altruism is favoured if
rB >C
r = coefficient of relatedness to recipient
B- benefit to the recipient
C = cost to the donor
*therefore the closer the genetic relatedness the closer the altruism is more likely and the greater the benefit to the cost
Altruism
Selfless concern for the wellbeing of others
Hamilton rule - alarm call example
alarm calls grow attention to yourself so at what point would you call an alarm to save others, but risk your own life?
E.g. red kangaroos would save sister over half sister
Ways that animals can cooperate or behave altruistically
- Hunting
- Alarm calling
- Mobbing
- Reproduction
- Territory defense
- Nest building
- Task division
Alarm calling
- an animal can chose to stay silent or to sound the alarm
- Pay a cost for sounding the alarm as the predator will be attracted
Cooperative breeding
- Non- breeding helpers raise young by dominant breeders
Two types of breeding
Obligate and Facultative
Obligate cooperative breeding
- Group consists of dominant male
- Helpers suckle young, babysit, defend
- Most common in meerkats
Facultative cooperative breeding
- When dispersal is limited, if you cant breed you can help
- there is a choice to help
Eusociality
- Make the sacrifice to help the queen raise more offspring
- common in bees and wasps
Cognitive ecology
Seeks to link behaviour with the underlying neural and psychological processes
Measuring cognition “cognitive domains”
- Spatial cognition
- Memory
- Physical cognition
- Innovation
- Social cognition
- Culture
Can cognition be inherited? (ways we can measure)
Correlation between parents and offspring
Cross breeding experiments
Artificial selection experiments
Molecular underpinnings
Chickadees example
Alaskan had higher neuron count than colarado chickadees
research performed mental experiments (i.e. hiding food)
Results suggested that it is not developmental learning but there is actually cognitive ability that the alaskan genetically were smarter
Cognitive buffer hypothesis
Large brains allow animals to adaptively mount quick, flexible behavioural responses to frequent or unexpected environmental change
Can cognitive traits be inherited?
YES
What is animal communication (and the process)
SENDER -> SIGNAL -> RECIEVER
Sender- what do they do?
Uses signals to modify the behaviour of another in a way that benefits the sender
Receiver- what does it do?
acts or responds because it gains useful information from the signal
Signal- what does it do?
signals can target any of the sense (hearing sight…)
Different to cues- these are an aspect of phenotype to which receivers response and did not evolve to influence receiver behaviour
Why communicate? What information does it give?
- information about sender and environment
Who is sending, where they are, if they ‘own’ the territory, mating calls, reaffirming bonds
Why make alarm calls?
inform group members about danger
inform a predator that it is discovered
signal to a predator that it shouldn’t it it
Are signals always honest?
No
e.g. batesian mimicry where animals that are not toxic mimic the call of a toxic animal to fool predators
however the ‘crying wold’ concept can happen and backfire on the animal
Are signals important in sexual selection?
yes, for mate choice especially and getting the male/females attention
the more successful a mating call is in getting the attention the more successful it would be in the animals reproductive fitness
Types of sexual selection
Male male competition
Female choice
Sperm competition
Cryptic-female choice
Why so male biased?
Females invest more time into producing offspring , for females reproductive success is influenced by mate quality, whilst in males it is increased by the number of mating
females are more “choosy” and therefore it is more men biased
Good genes hypothesis
A female will choose a male with the best genes and overall reproductive and life fitness to ensure that the offspring of the kids would be the best choice and outcome
Fishers hypothesis
Female chooses a showy male
females sons are showy
sons are successful
female has a lot of grandkids
