Exam 1

Question 1

What is animal behavior?

Answer 1

Any observable, external activity. A response to stimuli

Example: females being attracted to a certain trait is a behavior

Question 2

Angler fish

Answer 2

attract prey with their light and wait for awhile before eating their prey

Question 3

Ethology

Answer 3

Study of a behavior as an adaptation to the natural environment.
- shaped by natural selection
- Has genetic basis
- Focused on genetic components of behavior (aspects of behavior have to be genetic so that they can be passed from one generation to another)

Question 4

Proximate questions

Answer 4

immediate causes. What actually triggers the behavior? Genetics? Hormones? etc

Question 5

Ultimate Question

Answer 5

Evolution. What is the benefit behind this? Has it evolved once/twice?

Question 6

What are Timbergen’s four questions/four levels of analysis?

Answer 6

Proximate levels: development, mechanism (causation
Ultimate levels: Evolutionary history, adaptive function

Question 7

Development

Answer 7

understanding how behaviors change ontogenetically over the course of an animals life

Question 8

Evolutionary history

Answer 8

such as understanding how a shared ancestry influences variation in behavior

Question 9

Mechanisms (causation)

Answer 9

determining the physiological, neurobiological, hormonal, or genetic correlates of behavior (What part of the body causes this behavior to happen? Brain, hormones, etc…?)

Question 10

Adaptive function

Answer 10

How the behavioral trait has been shaped by natural selection to contribute to survival and reproductive success. The function of the behavior. (What is the benefit of that behavior? Why does this happen?)

Question 11

Sexual/genetic recombination

Answer 11

is the production of offspring with combinations of traits that differ from those found in either parent. Result of crossing over, independent assortment and fertilization.

Question 12

Darwinian Puzzle

Answer 12

Traits that appear to reduce rather than raise an individual’s reproductive success.

Example: in experiments where parent birds are given extra nestlings to rear the adults usually rear larger numbers of youngsters to fledging that then they do naturally. The puzzle is based on this, why don’t parents have one more baby?

Question 13

Infanticide

Answer 13

Eating or killing babies. This is due to there being too many babies to care for so the mother eats a few of them in order to be able to better care for the remaining ones (hamsters). This can also occur when a male wants to mate with a female who is preoccupied with babies from another male. The male will kill the babies from the other male so he can mate with the female (lions).

Question 14

Anthromorphism

Answer 14

applying human qualities (emotions or actions) to non-human animals.

Question 15

What determines a particular phenoytpe?

Answer 15

Nature AND nurture

Question 16

How do genes influence behavior?

Answer 16

Differences based on time (development

Question 17

How is it determined which genes are associated with which behaviors?

Answer 17

Evolutionary genetics and functional genomics

Question 18

Evolutionary genetics

Answer 18

DNA sequence variation across species, or individuals with different behaviors. For this we are looking for traces of natural selection in the genomes

Question 19

Functional genomics

Answer 19

Gene or protein expression compared across species or individuals with different behaviors. Here we are looking for changes in gene activity, may change rapidly in the same individual or be different in different cell types.

Question 20

Microarrays in animal behavior

Answer 20

allows us to determine differences in gene expression between different behaviors. (nurse vs forager bee example)

Question 21

How to determine how active a gene is in a particular tissue or at a particular time?

Answer 21

mRNA. More mRNA, higher level of gene expression

Question 22

Polytheism

Answer 22

as an adult worker ages, it passes through a series of behavioral, physiological and genetic changes

Question 23

What are the three major types of studies in Animal Behavior?

Answer 23

Observational, experimental and comparative analysis

Question 24

Observational study

Answer 24

define and record behaviors and relate them to a feature of the environment. Nothing is manipulated, everything is natural. Example: birds in the city vs birds in less populated areas. Correlational.

Question 25

Experimental Study (field, lab)

Answer 25

researcher manipulates features of animal or the environment to see how it affects behavior

Question 26

Comparative study

Answer 26

look for patterns across many species

Question 27

Do different environments cause changes in genetic expression?

Answer 27

yes

Question 28

Epigenetics

Answer 28

the study of how cells control gene activity without changing the DNA sequence. Epigenetic changes are modifications to DNA that regulate whether genes are turned on or off

Question 29

Behavioral continuum

Answer 29

behavior occurs on a continuum and ALL behavior has both innate and learned components

Question 30

Types of behaviors

Answer 30

innate, time sensitive learning, unrestricted plastic learning

Question 31

Innate behaviors

Answer 31

genetically determined - animal doesn’t learn it. Environment STILL plays a role!

Question 32

Time sensitive learning

Answer 32

ex: imprinting

Question 33

Unrestricted (plastic) learning

Answer 33

ex: taste aversion; spatial learning

Question 34

Imprinting

Answer 34

occurs early in life, irreversible, often influences species identity and mate choice as adults