Behavioural Ecology Flashcards
Throat colour and parasites
Molnar 2013
European starlings - blue/UV throat oatch affects female choice/male male competition.
Throat colour correlates with blood parasite load.
Sexual signalling of quality - positive mate choice beneficial/handicap hypotheses (Trivers/Zahavi)
Oxidative cost of begging
Nougera 2010
Begging is anti-oxidant demanding with oxidative stress as a cost. Begging behaviour could be honest signal of nutritional status.
Producers vs scroungers - zebra finches
David 2011
Producer = more consistent, predictable rewards. Poor-condition birds more likely to be producers. Variance-averse option may not alwasy be scrounging but could depend on group size/food clumping.
Behavioural plasticity
Morand-Ferron 2011
Games with frequency-dependent payoffs can maintain differences in plasticity of behaviour but group-/context-specific factors also play a role.
Bourgeois vs anti-bourgeois (finders keepers)
Mesterton-Gibbons 2013
First to find resource usually keeps it unchallenged by conspecifics.
Anti-bourgeois = fighting as an intruder, displaying as a holder can be the ESS even when there are costs to each round and sometimes increases with probability of individuals meeting again.
Infinite regress could lead to bourgeois being sole ESS but only when probability of meeting again is sufficiently high and there are high fight/mving costs. Anti-bourgeois can be ESS in some cases despite inefficiency of role swapping.
Central place effects in foraging
Olssen 2008
Classic model suggests amount of prey brought back to central place should increase with distance travelled to patch(long-term rate of energy decline as travel time increases). BUT costs of travel increase with load and predation cost may increase with distance travelled from the central place.
Effects of temperature and body size on volume of carbohydrate carried by a forager
Jandt 2010
Rate of delivery higher at warmer temperatures (gather more food but feed for shorter tme periods). Negative relationship between feeding time and load size.
Aposematism and mate attraction in Heliconius butterflies
Fenkbeiner 2014
Models - relative effectiveness of escaping predation correlates with effectiveness at inducing mating behaviour. Natural and sexual selection may work together to drive the evolution of specific colour patterns.
Aposematism in toxic frogs
Brown 2013
Availability of toxic prey and level of diet specialisation linked to aposematism. Conspicuousness of populations positively correlated with large body sizes. Physical size of the signal contributes to effectiveness of aposematic colouration/crypsis?
Larger group size = increased net rate of energy uptake
Rasmussen 2008
African wild dogs. Increasing group size increases prey size and capture probability while decreasing distance travelled.
Disease and social groups
Nunn 2012
Larger social groups or primates are often more subdivided so disease spread is slowed. May offset increase risk of disease in larger populations?
Predator attraction/defence in chestnut crowned babblers
Sorato 2012
Groups of all sizes are more likely to be attacked when they have young. Larger groups are more likely to be encountered but less likely to be attacked than smaller groups. Dilution effect clear (ie each individual has lower chance of being attacked). Predation may select for group living?
Sociality allows breeders to increase investment in immunity
Lutermann 2008
Non-breeders reduce workoad for breeders so breeders are able to invest more energy into immune functions
Pheasant female preferentially mate with long-spurred males
Schantz 1994
Female production of surviving offspring correlates with spur length. Offspring fathered by long-spurred males have better survival.
Dominant bank voles invest more sperm per ejaculate expenditure than subordinates
Lemaitre 2012
Subordinates don’t compensate by increasing frequency or velocity of ejaculates.
Bats and reproductive delays
Orr 2013
Reproductive delays may facilitate sperm competition. Species with delayed fertilisation have bigger testes (proxy for increased sperm competition).
Inbreeding avoidance in banded mongooses
Nichols et al 2014
Altruism as an honest signal of social prestige
Lotem 1999
Zahavi presents this as an alternative to kin selection. In reality, both could work together.
Condition, rather than benefits of helping, dictates whether breeders help or not
Meade 2010
Long tailed tits - helpers are in good condition, males wit helping opportunities who don’t help are poor condition, non-helpers witout helping opportunities are a mix of good and poor quality birds
Failed breeders preferentially help closest kin
Sharp 2008
Long-tailed tits
Fairy wren helpers don’t increase nest productivity
Wright 2008
Increase future survival of breeding females instead
Cooperative breeding and monogamus mating systems
Lukas 2012
Cooperative breeding is limited to socially monogamous mating systems where r is high. Why don’t all socially monogamous lineages cooperatively breed? Only in lineages where females produce multiple offspring are produced per birth - and also only where helpers have the potential to increase reproductive output of breeders.
