Elissa Cameron Lectures Flashcards
What are the costs of living in groups?
Pathogen transmission, multiple mating opportunity, conspecific competition, cannibalism, and infanticide.
What is pathogen transmission as a cost of living in groups?
As population size increases within a group, the risk of disease and parasites spreading also increases due to closer interactions among individuals.
What is multiple mating opportunities as a cost of living in groups?
In larger groups, there’s greater competition for mating opportunities, leading to increased effort and competition for reproduction.
What is conspecific competition as a cost of living in groups?
Individuals within a group may compete with each other for limited resources like food, breeding sites, and mates.
What is cannibalism as a cost of living in groups?
In some cases, group living can increase the risk of cannibalism, especially among individuals at different life stages.
What is infanticide as a cost of living in groups?
The presence of unrelated males in a group might lead to infanticide, where these males kill the offspring of others to increase their own reproductive success.
What are the benefits of living in groups?
Aggregation for common resources, breeding benefits, food and social information, group foraging, and predation-related benefits.
What is aggregation for common sources as a benefit of living in groups?
Individuals in a group may aggregate in a specific areas where resources like food are abundant.
What are the breeding benefits of living in groups?
Group living might provide access to specific or rare nest sites that are safer or more suitable for reproduction.
What is food and social information as a benefit of living in groups?
Information sharing in a group enhances foraging success and resource efficiency. Collective detection aids food location. Less successful foragers can follow successful ones. Sharing reduces predation risk but may decrease individual intake, affecting foraging efficiency.
What is group foraging as a benefit of living in groups?
Animals cooperate in hunting for better resource availability, efficiency, competitiveness, and larger prey capture.
What are the predation related benefits of living in groups?
Group living boosts predator detection, dilution safety, and communal defense. The “many eyes hypothesis” holds that more individuals enhance predator spotting. Coordination can involve vigilance for detection.
The dilution effect occurs in larger groups, reducing individual targeting and confusion for predators, leading to lower attack success. Communal defense includes mobbing, where individuals collectively deter predators.
What is the dilution effect in babies?
A simultaneous birth of many species’ babies creates a “baby boom” that overwhelms predators, hindering their success in preying on the offspring.
What is predator confusion?
When predators attempt to focus on a single target within a larger group, they may experience difficulty due to the sheer number of potential targets. Attack success tends to decline as group size increases.
What is communal defence?
Grouped prey animals use communal defense like mobbing to protect against predators. Mobbing involves collective confrontation with vocalizations and coordinated movements, intimidating and repelling predators, reducing predation risk.
What are some social factors in grouping?
Harassment from other members of the group, competition for resources, and even infanticide can influence how individuals position themselves within the group. Vigilance and social bonding can also contribute to group cohesion.
What is optimal group size?
A delicate balance between the benefits gained from being part of a group and the costs associated with it.
How is optimal group size measured?
Researchers often use mathematical models and observations to estimate the ideal group size for a given species. The optimal group size can vary based on the specific ecological context, predation pressure, resource availability, and social dynamics.
What are altruistic and cooperative behaviours?
Behaviours within a species carring a direct cost for the individual performing it, negatively affecting their own reproductive success.
Despite the direct cost, the behaviour brings a net positive effect on the reproductive success of the recipients, providing them with an indirect benefit.
What are the benefits and costs of grooming behaviour?
Indirect benefit: Reduced parasite infection for the recipient.
Direct cost: Higher exposure to parasites, lower vigilance, and time and energy expenditure.
What are the benefits and costs of sentinels/alarm calls?
Indirect benefit: Reduced vigilance for the recipient.
Direct cost: Susceptible to predation, lower feeding rate, and time and energy expenditure.
What are the benefits and costs of defence behaviour?
Indirect benefit: Reduced predation risk for recipient.
Direct cost: Higher exposure to predators, lower feeding rate, and time and energy expenditure.
What are the benefits and costs of collective foraging?
Indirect benefit: Higher group feeding rate.
Direct cost: Lower individual feed rate.
