Exam 1 Flashcards
1
Q
Motors that control behavior
A
- The dendrites of the neuron detect mechanical, electrical, or chemical stimulation
- Rapid depolarization along the axon causes an action potential to propagate the signal rapidly to the next neuron (an individual nerve cell)
- > primarily dendrites which receive signals from other cells which causes a depolarization of the neuron which causes a rapid release of neurotransmitters from the axon terminals
2
Q
Pre-historical humans influence on studying animal behavior
A
- animal behavior dates back to pre-historical humans
- hunter and gatherers had to act like ethologists in order to understand the prey and predators they were trying to catch
- animal behavior was so fundamental to human existence it was depicted on cave paintings that showed animals performing behaviors
3
Q
Ivan Pavlov
A
- historical foundation in comparative physiology when considering animal behavior and the field of behavioral ecology
- Russian physiologist
- first developed Pavlovian (classical) conditioning
4
Q
Phenotypic plasticity
A
- The ability of single genotype to express different phenotypes in different environments
- the ability to behaviorally respond to the same circumstances in different ways
- > result of learning, experience triggers a different response
5
Q
Gene flow
A
- very fast change of a population
- the movement of individuals from one pop to another that changes the frequency, or number of different alleles
- slows down differentiation and process of speciation
- > keeps species unified bc moving back together by migrants
6
Q
Behavioral Plasticity
A
- the variation of behavior that occurs when in a different environment
Ex: females lay eggs earlier with each warmer year because their main food source are emerging earlier
7
Q
Mutation and Genetic Drift
A
- > slow evolutionary changes
1. Equilibrium - there is no change in allele frequency
- > what HWE predicts
2. Mutation - have a new trait by a random change in the alleles
- can lead to rapid speciation
3. Genetic Drift - random loss of allele
- no environmental component
- matters most when populations are small, if very large genetic drift is negligible
8
Q
Genotype
A
- The genetic constitution of an individual
- may refer to the alleles of one gene possessed by the individual or to its complete set of genes
9
Q
Natural selection example in Hawaiin crickets
A
- showed how natural selection operates on animal behavior in the wild
- male crickets sing to attract females, but this song was also attracting parasites that would kill the offspring
- eventually flatwinged male crickets that could not produce songs evolved and found reproductive success by gravitating towards males who could
- eventually this mutation prevailed and most males are now flatwing males
10
Q
Gene
A
- is the location on the DNA strand that codes for a particular trait
11
Q
Different approaches to ethology
A
- Empirical approach
- tinbergen’s sign stimulus experiments (modify one trait at a time and see how influences behavior) - Conceptual Approach
- Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection - Theoretical approach
- Charnov’s marginal value theorem
12
Q
In what case is there no evolution, or response to selection?
A
- if you have strong selection(s), but no heritability (h^2)
- if you have strong heritability, but no selection
- > WILL SEE NO EVOLUTION
13
Q
Candidate gene
A
- any gene that has been identified in one organism that is hypothesized to influence a similar phenotype in another organism
14
Q
Lloyd Morgan
A
- historical foundation in comparative psychology when considering animal behavior and the field of behavioral ecology
- British psychologist
- Morgan’s canon
- > give the simplest level of explanation to animal behavior without using higher levels of cognitive thinking
- Operant conditioning
- > learning by investigation and seeing how animals can adjust behaviors if given a task
15
Q
Innate Releasing Mechanism (IRM)
A
- “A special (hypothetical) neurosensory mechanism that releases the reaction and is responsible for its selective susceptibility to a very special combination of sign stimuli”
- > Tinbergen
16
Q
What did historical comparative psychologists focus on?
A
- Historically, comparative psychologists focused on mechanistic causal explanations of plastic behaviors
- > plastic behaviors are ones that can be changed based on environmental conditions
- such as operant (instrumental) conditioning, Morgan’s canon, behaviorism, and Tabula Rasa
17
Q
Nature vs Nurture in Ethology
A
- thought animal behavior was due to natural selection and that nature made them that way
1. Causation
2. Instinct Theory
3. Field observations
4. Related Species
5. Anthropomorphism - assigning human characteristics to non-human things
6. Europeans
18
Q
Fitness
A
- A measure of the increased survival or reproduction within a generation conferred by having a particular trait
- Fitness is relative to the alternative traits in the same population
19
Q
HWE equation if you know genotype(2 letters) frequencies
A
- Calculate the allele frequencies
- take the frequency of homozygote (AA) and add to 1/2 frequency of heterozygote (Aa)
- > AA+ (Aa/2) - Calculate the expected genotype frequencies
- use HWE
- (A^2 + 2Aa + a^2)
- > plug in do not add to each other to find each individual AA, Aa and aa
- > if observed genotype frequencies are not equal to expected than traits show evidence of evolution (not in HWE equilibrium)
20
Q
What is the evolutionary history (phylogeny) of the zig-zag dance behavior? (Evolution)
A
- dance is shared by five species, but dance and color are a unique combination of traits
- > zig-zag dance arose first, and then red body color arose to distinguish different species
- > females following males to the nest began even before zig-zag dance
- > phylogenetic method to determine
21
Q
When does learning confer a fitness advantage?
A
- when you have a high lifetime predictability and a low between generation predictability
22
Q
Phenotype
A
- Any measurable aspect of an individual that arises from an interaction of the individual’s genes with its environment
23
Q
Response to selection equation
A
- R = h^2*s
- h^2=R/S
- > evolutionary response (R) is mean trait differences between generations (R=x2-x0) and plug R and S into (h^2= R/S)
- h2 = heritability (0.0-1.0)
- > Can be estimated by the slope of the relationship between the offspring trait and the mid-parent trait
- > 0.5 is considered high heritability
- > 0.25 most behaviors have heritability less than this
- s = selection differential (0-1)
- > Can be estimated by the difference in variant fitness.
- > the trait differences among variants within a generation (s=x1-x0)
24
Q
How do male sticklebacks acquire the zig-zag dance behavior? (Ontogeny)
A
- once the male matures, the nest is built, and a female is present
- instinct rather than learned (naturally acquired in development)
- > when male is preparing to mate hormone levels peak, and red color is not present
- > hormone levels drop post-mating and red color appears
25
Behavioral ecology is the interpretation of five historical foundations or fields
- behaviors are modified by genes and experiences
- behavioral ecology has two mature axis: nature vs nurture and proximate vs ultimate
- > every behavior has a nurture component influenced by development and a nature component influenced by genes (not a valid argument that can be divided here)
- > proximate (mechanics making a behavior occur) and ultimate causation (what is the survival value)
- > this is what actually divides
1. Ethology
2. Comparative Psychology
3. Comparative Physiology
4. Evolutionary Biology
5. Nature vs Nurture
- arose from disagreements between ethology and psychology
- > Lorenz (ethologist) butted heads with a British psychologist over animal behavior
26
Three foundations of behavior
1. Natural selection
2. Individual learning
3. Cultural transmission
27
What mechanisms cause the behavior of the zig-zag dance in male sticklebacks? (causation)
- the female's body color,
| posture (head up) and girth (females that have eggs) elicit the zig-zag dance in males
28
Constraints on learning
- pathways in our brain tell us what to learn
- how we perceive the information influence whether we can learn or not
Ex: rats can associate taste with nausea, but not electric shock with nausea
- imprinting
-> found in animals with extensive parental care
-> mechanism of kin discrimination (if it was not family, it would have eaten me mindset)
-> has limited sensitive period to avoid improper behaviors
-> peak window in learning to imprint on mom, max locomotive ability and minimum fear
29
Neurohormone (neurotransmitter)
- Chemical messengers that travel via extracellular fluids to specific receptors on adjacent cell membranes
30
Songbirds methods of learning songs
- closed vs open-ended learning
- > some need to learn during sensitive period, then learning no longer occurs
- > other birds learn songs over a lifetime (open ended learners)
- repertoire size
- > if mate can only sing one song vs many songs (many songs is attractive to females because good cognitive ability)
- develop their song by:
- > imitation (hear a song and sing it back just the way they heard it)
- > improvisation (get elements, but they vary)
- > invention (do not follow structure at all and create brand new song)
- external(have to learn it from scratch) vs internal(innate-do not need to hear song) song models
- > genetics vs learned
- selective song learning vs mimicry (sound like a different species)
- shows that learning is instinctive, but exposure can also affect (both nature and nurture applies)
31
Tabula Rasa
- Literally, a “blank slate” or state of the mind of an organism at birth under the theory of behaviorism.
32
Fitzpatrick: Candidate genes for behavioral ecology
- In spite of millions of years of evolutionary divergence,
the conservation of gene function is common across
distant lineages
- genes that are known to
influence behavior in one organism are likely to
influence similar behaviors in other organisms
- Changes in the expression of candidate genes can reveal their contribution to behavioral variation and/or phenotypic plasticity
-> Candidate genes are ‘nominated’ by knowledge of how they influence
similar behaviors in other organisms.
- Recent use of candidate genes has expanded our understanding of evolutionary adaptation and behavior
in organisms that are, for the most part, not known for extensive genetic experimentation
- The CGA, in concert with genomics and QTL mapping, provides an accessible and useful tool for providing a detailed understanding of the role of genes in behavioral ecology
33
HWE equation if you know the allele frequencies
- Equation is (A^2 + 2Aa + a^2)
- if you know allele(one letter) frequencies you can calculate genotype frequencies
- > just plug in
34
Evolution
- A change in frequency of a trait over multiple generations
- These changes may be due to selection (natural, sexual, kin) or by chance events (genetic drift, gene flow, mutation)
- > occurs across generations
35
Natural Selection
- The process at the heart of Darwin’s theory of evolution
- the force that operates within a generation that determines who reproduces and who does not
- Individuals within a species have variation in their morphology, physiology and behaviors
- Some of this variation is heritable as offspring tend to resemble their parents
- More offspring are born than can survive, so there must be competition for resources
- Those variants that do best in the environment will leave behind more offspring
- Divergence of variants due to changes in the environment can lead to new species
36
Non-genetically acquired information
- personal information if someone is watching will move into social information/public knowledge
- location cues can figure out where resources are by watching someone else get them
- inadvertent information by the performance (public information is performance of the information producers)
- Public information can lead to cultural evolution which we suggest may then affect biological evolution
- from these get culture, intentional and unintentional information gathered from social groups
- > reputation as to whether or not you would be worth following
37
Evolution by Natural Selection
Three components
1. variations between individuals in a population
2.
BEETLE EXAMPLE
- more beetles are born than can survive
- > within first generation, not all beetles can survive
- beetles vary in phenotype (a product of genotype and the environment, IOW what makes an individual successful could be their genes or the environment)
- > need populations with individuals that have distinct differences
- some phenotypes survive better than others in particular environments, not because either is better but because one is more fitted (natural selection)
- > this results in a change in trait frequency across generations (evolution)
- > results in some phenotypes disappearing and others prevailing
- the spotless beetle phenotype has a higher fitness, and therefore is an adaptation
- > fitness is the relative measure of how many phenotypes are left behind
- > adaptation is the new phenotypes that form
38
Activity patterns in Biological clocks
1. Period
- length of time from the beginning of one cycle to the beginning of the next
2. Free running cycle
- cycle that changes in onset without appropriate environmental cues
- normal amount of activity we show in the absence of an environmental cue (23-25 hrs)
- > allow you to adjust clock with seasons (light/dark patterns change)
3. Entrained
- cycle that is reset daily by some environmental cue
39
Tinbergen's Paper Summary: The Curious Behavior of the Stickleback
- stickle backs are good for studying innate (Instinctive) behavior aka Proximate causations
- > proximate causations
- studied courtship and reproductive behavior
- > found it was instinctive and automatic
- male finds and protects territory for a period time regardless of whether they have available resources to mate bc instinctive, builds nest, piles in weeds and sticky substance from kidneys, makes tunnel by burrowing through, becomes colorful to court female when ready to mate
- females have girth (full of eggs), body color and when ready to mate will approach male with head up posture
- when female is in the males territory it will zig-zag dance to get the male to follow them to the nest
- male burrows into the nest, female goes through after and male nudges their tail to induce egg laying
- male then swims through to fertilize eggs and chases female away to find (3-5 more mates)
- eventually red color in male will go away so it can perform maternal behavior
- males will attack red males that enter the territory more aggressively than other species of fish
- > in an experiment put diff color fish in a tank and the male only reacted to the red model, same with morphology- put diff shaped models in and males tried to court the one with a distended stomach like a female
- females had similar behavior in that they would follow red models to a nest in the ground
- > they were able to be induced into spawning by being nudged with a glass rod even after the red model was removed
- > concluded that females responded to a sign stimulus (a few characteristics rather than the object as a whole- the redness of the fish counts, not the fish itself)
- in non-mating season the object was ignored
- > also concluded that animals participate in "plastic behaviors" with an innate bases
40
Gould and Lewanton: a critique of adaptationist program
- the rewards of abandoning specific focus on the adaptationist program are very great
- they say that adaptionist program has faith in the power of natural selection as an optimizing agent
- > precedes by breaking an organism into unitary traits and proposing an adaptive story for each considered separately
- want to use Darwin's pluralistic approach to identify the agents of evolutionary change
- competing approach that organisms must be evaluated as integrated wholes using pathways of development, phylogenies etc
- fault program for current utility from reasons of origin (bs doesn't explain why)
- used biological and non-biological examples
41
Mendel's Rules of Inheritance
1. Law of segregation
- alleles at the same genetic locus will segregate into separate gametes
2. Law of independent assortment
- alleles at different genetic loci will show independent assortment, unless genetically linked
42
Karl von Frisch
- historical foundation in comparative physiology when considering animal behavior and the field of behavioral ecology
- Austria physiologist
- Honeybee waggle dance
- > can communicate direction and distance to collect honey
43
Four aims of behavioral ecology
- Tinbergen's four questions
-> all four must be met to describe behavior
1. How do animals behave (proximate analysis- immediate causes)
- what causes the behavior and how it occurs
A. Mechanistic (causation)
-> what stimuli elicit behavior
B. developmental (acquisition)
-> Ontogeny, or how does behavior change through maturation
2. Why do animals behave (ultimate analysis-evolutionary forces)
- describes survival value
C. survival value (adaptive significance)
-> why its been persistent through time (reproductive success and survival)
D. evolutionary history (phylogenetic/evolution)
-> what in history caused this behavior
44
Axons
- The body of the neuron
| - Nerve cell fibers that transmit electrical information from one nerve cell to another
45
Grant and Grant: Synergism of Natural Selection and Introgression in the Origin of a New Species
- explores how introgressive hybridization enhances the evolutionary effects of natural selection and how, reciprocally, natural selection can enhance the evolutionary effects of introgression
- Variation is enhanced by mutation and altered, and sometimes reduced,
by selection and by random drift.
- to assess the role of selection and hybridization at the beginning of speciation
- We conclude by noting that the speciation we have described does not conform to existing speciation theories.
- It has elements of allopatric, sympatric, founder effect and
ecological speciation while not being fully accounted for
by any one of them
- The key ingredient appears to be introgressive hybridization on one
island leading to reproductive isolation from the parental
species on another
46
Reflex
- A simple stimulus response connection believed to be unlearned and characteristic of a species
- mechanical, not learned
- Reflexes are usually favored when inappropriate behavior is costly
- Even reflexes can change with repeated exposure to stimuli
47
What is the survival value (adaptive significance) of the zig-zag dance behavior? (Function)
- females prefer to mate with males that zig-zag dance and are red in color of those that do not
48
Artificial selection
- A process that is identical with natural selection, except that humans control the reproductive success of alternative types within the selected population
- variation among individual phenotypes
- some of this variation is heritable (offspring look like their parents)
- individuals with the desired traits are bred to produce the next generation
- Result is that more individuals will have the desired trait in each generation
49
Individual learning with bird example
Bird example
- females that mate with different males in different seasons can influence choices of males in the future
- advantageous to female to learn different qualities and characteristics in males
EX: a female mates with 3 males having different traits and each produced a different amount of eggs
- an example of individual learning would be if the female learned which male was associated with the highest egg production and survival and chose to mate with that male in the future
50
Epigenetics
- The study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence
- > experience dependent inheritance
- > experience in environment affects genome to change the way genes are expressed
- behaviors you experience throughout your lifetime are passed on to your offspring
ex: if you are chronically stressed throughout your whole life, so will your offspring
- conflicts idea of nature vs nurture
- > epigenetics tell us it is both having the gene and being in an environment that allows for proper expression of gene
51
Cultural Transmission
- transfer of information from individual to individual via social learning, or teaching
- transmission
- > horizontally (btw members of the same generation)
- > vertically and obliquely (vertically- to offspring and obliquely-to next generation but not necessarily to your offspring)
- population/group develops behaviors that unite them in a unique way
52
Heritability
- The level of transmission of a trait from one generation to the next
- heritability of trait is measured by comparing the trait in the parent and the offspring, then plotting these measures on a line and determining the slope
- > the closer the slope is to .5 the more controlled the trait is by genes
- > significant positive slopes indicate trait is heritable
53
Acquisition and Transmission
1. Acquisition – How is the behavior acquired?
- Inherited, fixed and unchanged by the environment
- Plastic, variable and cued by the environment
- Learned, modified by experience
2. Transmission – How is the behavior inherited?
- Genetic, passed on by genes
- Epigenetic, passed on by genes modified by experience or the environment
- Horizontal, copied to individuals in same generation
- Vertical, copied to individuals in next generation
54
Homeostasis
- The property of a living system that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition of properties like temperature or pH
55
Cultural transmission example with mice
- culture is an important influence on learning through generations
Ex:
- a rat is heating a hot dog and the generation 1 rats smell the hot dog on the rat who ate it
- then the rat pups from the second generation smell the generation 1 rots after they have eaten hot dogs
- generation 2 starts eating the hot dog
56
Pleiotropic genes
- A single gene that affects multiple traits (phenotypes)
- > all animals are made up by they same set of genes, but have a different combination of genes that get expressed
- can look for differences in genes by doing a knockout mutation (disrupts the expression of a particular gene)
57
Allele
- is one form of the gene found on a single chromosome
58
Niko Tinbergen
- historical foundation of ethology when considering animal behavior and the field of behavioral ecology
- dutch zoologist
- instinct, sign stimulus
- four aims of ethology
59
Niko Tinbergen's definition of animal behavior
- total movement made by an intact animal
60
Hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis
1. hypothalamus receives input from the senses
2. Hypothalamus releases corticotropin Releasing Hormone(CRH) which targets anterior pituitary
3. Anterior pituitary releases adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)
4. Affects adrenal cortex and produces cortisol, stress hormone
5. Cortisol acts as an inhibitor to slow down release of ACTH at anterior pituitary, or can slow down release of CRH at hypothalamus
- > self regulatory, negative feedback system
- anterior pituitary activates the other endocrine organs
- adrenal cortex signals the heart, liver, stomach, as well as emotions and drive
61
Teaching
- perform behavior with intent of showing you how to do it
- if tutor modifies the behavior in the presence of the pupil
- tutor foregoes immediate benefit (cost)
- pupil acquires knowledge
62
Aristotle's influence on studying animal behavior
- was a great observer of nature and came up with ideas as to why animals behaved in certain ways
- > veritable treasure chest of ethological tidbits
63
Proximate Causation
- An immediate, underlying cause based on the operation of internal mechanisms possessed by the individual, or how a behavior occurs
64
Criticism of Adaptationist Program
- S.J Gould
- argues that chance events such as mutation, recombination, drift and gene flow may be more important than natural selection over the long term (role that chance plays can just be unlucky)
- Hypotheses about adaptation are untestable since they are questions of a historical nature and are not subjected to experimentation.
- Behavioral ecologists ignore constraints that would prevent selection from acting upon each trait individually
65
Hormones
- Chemical messengers that travel via the blood to specific target tissues where they cause changes in the activities of the target tissue cells
66
Fitzgerald's Paper Summary: The Reproductive Behavior of the Stickleback
- explores ecological aspects of behavior
- > study addressed the question about adaptive significance of their behavior (survival value) aka ultimate causations
- females choose males based on visual cues, such as color and quality of nest size
- females try to increase their reproductive success by eating other females eggs because males will fertilize other males nests as well as their own
- it was theorized in the past that females preferred redder males, but this was found to not be the cause
- > concluded that the best predictor of males reproductive success was the degree of cover of their next
- > more cover = more eggs, not the brightness of the male
- females did not care if males remained because any male could fertilize their eggs only cared if it was hidden from predators
- males will chase any female that enters territory away because they know they will eat the eggs
- > if attacked by a large group of females will swim erratically leading them away from the nest
- > females were the largest source of stress on the males and so males will attack them unless they are going to mate with them
67
Konrad Lorenz
- historical foundation of ethology when considering animal behavior and the field of behavioral ecology
- austrian zoologist
- instinct, FAP (fixed action pattern), IRM(innate releasing mechanism), and imprinting
- ethograms
- > best known for his theory of instinct
68
How does the structure of Molecular Messengers influence its effectiveness?
- HORMONES
- differ in biochemical shape
- some are simple structures, (neurotransmitters) with a very short 1/2 life
- steroid hormones, like sex hormones and pheromones are complicated and meant to last a long time
69
Pavlovian (Classical) conditioning
- classical condition
- learning that occurs through the experimental pairing of a conditioned and unconditioned stimulus
ex: scientists put dogs in a harness and used an unconditioned stimulus (food) to trigger salivation in the dogs (unconditioned response)
-> then they would put out the food as they would ring a bell (conditioned stimulus) and the dogs would salivate (UCR)
-> eventually ringing the bell (conditioned stimulus) would trigger the dogs to salivate (conditioned response
FUNNIER EXAMPLE:
-> dwight and the mints, when jim would turn the computer on and make the noise he would give dwight a mint
-> dwight eventually put his hand out expecting a mint when jim randomly turned on his computer
70
Ultimate Causation
- The evolutionary, historical reason why something is the way it is, or why a behavior occurs
71
Social aspects of learning
1. Personal Information (you discover information)
- Individuals can acquire information about their environment by personal experience using trial and error tactics
- Individual learning
2. Public information (learn from others by watching)
- Individuals acquire by monitoring others interactions with the environment
- Social Facilitation
- > Location of resources
- > Quality of resources
72
Inadvertent Public information vs Social Learning
1. Inadvertent public information
- inadvertent/unintentional social information regarding the location of resources or the quality of resources.
- The use of public information by others may create the selective pressures that transform public information into specific signals via cultural evolution
2. Social learning
- individuals acquire behavior by watching others perform the behavior
- > copying (repeats action of a demonstrator)
- > imitation (perform behavior you never done)
- > teaching (perform behavior with intent of showing you how to do it)
73
Artificial selection vs Natural selection
- both processes are identical
- difference is in the desired trait and who does the choosing of the desired trait to breed
- there is no competition for resources in artificial selection, but there is in natural selection
- in natural selection nature chooses who gets to breed and in artificial selection humans choose for desired trait
74
Sign Stimulus (SS)
- The effective component of an action or object that triggers a fixed action pattern in an animal
75
Genotype
- representation of the two alleles at a given locus, or more than one loci
76
Group Selection
- violates principle that individual is the unit of selection
- traits are favored because of benefit of the group
- The process of natural selection operating on the reproductive success of a group of cooperating individuals
- > Rarely is group selection strong enough to prevent individual selection from overwhelming it
77
Ganglia role involving neurons
- chains of neurons connect the sensory organs to the neural processing centers, the ganglia
- Ganglia in different regions coordinate the mouthparts, feeding appendages, wings, legs and ovipositors
78
Nature vs Nurture in Evolutionary Biology
1. Natural Selection
2. Evolutionary theory
3. Field observations
4. Fossil species
5. Evolutionary history
6. Americans
79
John B. Watson
- historical foundation in comparative psychology when considering animal behavior and the field of behavioral ecology
- American psychologist
- behaviorism and tabula rasa
- > come in as a blank slate and learn how to behave based on experiences
- > behaviorism assumes a learner is passive and responds to external stimuli, learner starts off as a clean slate (tabula rasa) and behavior is shaped through positive and negative reinforcements
80
Ethogram
- A precise descriptive catalog of all postures and patterns of movement an animal (species) might make in any natural context
81
What did historical ethologists focus on?
- Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen
- Historical ethologists focused on mechanistic causal explanations of stereotypic behaviors
- this included instinct, ethograms, fixed action patters (FAP), sign stimulus (SS) which causes animals to perform the behavior, and innate releasing mechanism (IRM)
Ex of FAP: when an egg is displaced from the geese's nest, the geese will roll the egg with it's beak back to the nest
- Described posture and behavior
- fixed action patter = once started must be completed before going on to the next behavior
82
Morgan’s Canon
- " In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher mental faculty, if it can be interpreted as the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale"
- Morgan
83
Imprinting
- A form of learning in which individuals exposed to certain key stimuli, usually early in life, form an association with the object and may later show sexual behavior toward similar objects
84
New definition of adaptation
- Most definitions of adaptation incorporate elements of history that are impossible to confirm
- A new definition of adaptation should be “a phenotypic variant that results in higher fitness among a specified set of variants in a given environment.”
- This make a specific and testable prediction that “among a set of alternatives that adapted phenotype will be the one that predominates in a given environment.”
85
Single Stimulus Experience Leanring
- how animals learn
1. Habituation
- Becoming less sensitive to stimuli over time
- Habituation occurs to prevent unnecessary loss of opportunity (time)
2. Sensitization
- Becoming more sensitive to a stimuli over time
- Sensitization occurs to prevent unnecessary loss of experience (knowledge)
86
Sewell Wright & Ronald Fisher
- studied natural selection by MODERN SYNTHESIS
- field of mathematics to determine how evolution would occur
- > population genetics
1. Wright
- American geneticist
- founder of population genetics
2. Fisher
- British statistician
- father of modern statistics and experimental design
87
Grants finch research and Darwin's theory
- Bill shape changed in response to changes in the environment (seed type)
- Bill shape influenced song features leading to assortative mating
- New hybrid variant shows reproductive isolation and thus, is a new species
- However, this process was not gradual as Darwin predicted, but instead very rapid
- > Darwin got this wrong
88
Beecher: Functional aspects of song learning in songbirds
- The diversity of song-learning strategies in oscine species varies on at least five dimensions:
(i) closed-ended versus open-ended learning;
(ii) repertoire size;
(iii) imitation versus improvisation versus invention; (iv) external versus internal song models;
(v) selective song learning versus mimicry.
- We believe that many questions about the evolution of song learning will yield to an integrated approach in which comparative data on song-learning strategies are analyzed in a full phylogenetic context.
- As comparative studies of songbirds have accumulated, however, the focus has shifted to the evolution of different song-learning programs within the oscines
89
Lee Alan Dugatkin's definition of animal behavior
- the coordinated responses of whole living organisms to internal and/or external stimuli
90
Nature vs Nurture in Comparative Psychology
- thought animals behaved a certain way due to learning and environmental influence (nurture more important than nature)
1. Ontogeny
2. Learning Theory
3. Lab experiments
4. Model Species
5. Morgan's canon
6. Americans
91
Biological clock influence on behavior
- circadian rhythm is in a free form
- an internal physiological mechanism that enables organisms to time any of a wide assortment of biological processes and activities
- biological clock is regulated by light (sensory) and affects our activity patters
92
Taxis
- are guideposts to orientation and locomotion and often have a genetic basis
- Taxis are behavioral responses toward very specific sensory modalities
Ex: Attraction to light (phototaxis)
- experiment with geotaxis (the ability to respond to earth's gravity)
- phonotaxis: sound
- chemotaxis: chemical molecules
- magnetotaxis: elements of magnetic field of the earth
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circadian rhythms, circatidal rhythm, circalunar cycles
- Circadian rhythms
- > adjust to periods of light
- > about 24 hour cycle
- Circatidal rhythms
- > adjust due to high/low tides
- > about 13 hour cycle
- Circalunar cycle
- > only feed during the full moon
- > 28 day activity cycle
94
Darwin's Finches of Galapagos
- Darwin realized that the birds from different islands had very different beaks
- > each of the birds feed ecologically in different environments
- discovered an association between diets of birds and bills of the birds
95
Instinct
- A behavior pattern that reliably develops in most individuals
- promoting a function response to a releaser stimulus the first time the action is performed
- Instincts were whole patterns of behavior such as drinking, eating, fighting, courting, literally “driven from within”.
96
Natural and Sexual Selection
- operate based on the environment
| - natural selection that can predict expected change in allele frequencies for next generation
97
Behaviorism
- A sub discipline of psychology that studied the sum total of an animal’s responses, reactions, or adjustments to local stimuli and how past events affect future behavior
98
Danchin: Public Information: From Nosy Neighbors to Cultural Evolution
- Individuals can use information arising from cues inadvertently produced by the behavior of other individuals with similar requirements.
- Many of these cues provide public information about the quality of alternatives.
- The use of public information is taxonomically widespread and can enhance fitness.
- Public information can lead to cultural evolution, which we suggest may then affect biological evolution.
- PI is a widespread phenomenon that is emerging as a potential unifying concept in fields that involve decision-making processes in which individuals can extract information from others to assess resource quality.
- The use of PI can enrich evolutionary models and can have marked effects on evolutionary predictions.
- in summary, the ability of individuals to use PI unites a range of topics as diverse as foraging, predation, mate choice, habitat selection, and colony formation.
- The study of PI, which is inadvertently produced, may also enhance our understanding of the evolution of signals and hence communication.
- Finally, the public information framework provides a useful approach for examining the evolution of culture and its influence on biological evolution.
99
Peter and Rosemary Grant
- studied natural selection OBSERVED IN NATURE
- British ecologists
- studied the ecology of Galapagos finches
- > they were on the island so long they were able to follow every bird in the population and see evolutionary change
100
Fitness
- A measure of the genes contributed to the next generation by an individual
- often stated in terms of the number of surviving offspring produced by the individual
- Direct fitness is the genes contributed by an individual via personal reproduction in the bodies of surviving offspring
101
William D. Hamilton
- historical foundation in evolutionary biology when considering animal behavior and the field of behavioral ecology
- British evolutionary biologist
- recognized that families can undergo evolutionary selection
- Kin selection
- > helping family members could be due to evolutionary change because helping the genes that you carry persist through the environment by helping close kin, even if its at the cost of the individual's own survival
- selfish herd theory
- > some cooperative behaviors have a selfish source, group together because safety in numbers and safer to hide in the middle of the herd/group
102
Broad sense heritability
- how much variation due to genotype vs phenotype
- what proportion of heritability is strictly attributed to genes
- when VG>VE, have high H=1
- > traits change rapidly across generations
- when VG traits change slowly across generations, or not at all
- VI = interaction term
- > is interaction between genes and the environment
103
Defense of the Adaptationist Program
- E.W Mayr
- Selection may not be as important as drift or constraints, but we should begin with eliminating selection (test if its adaptive first)
- Hypotheses about adaptation may be untestable, but hypotheses about selection are falsifiable
- The presence of constraints on adaptation are widely recognized
104
Pheromones
- Chemical messengers that travel via fluids outside of the body to specific target receptors in other organisms that causes changes in the activity of the target tissue cells
105
Learning
- Learning is “a relatively permanent change in behavior as a result of experience”
- Learning can only be measured by the degree to which a behavior has changed before and after an experience
- Learning is one type of phenotypic plasticity
106
Operant (instrumental) conditioning
- Instrumental conditioning
- > learning that occurs when a response made by an animal is reinforced by reward, or punishment
ex: put cats in a box and allow them to try to escape
- > eventually they were able to get out faster when they tried again
- > even by the second time in the box they were able to recognize quicker how to get out
107
Charles Darwin
- historical foundation in evolutionary biology when considering animal behavior and the field of behavioral ecology
- British naturalist
- animal and plant breeder
- founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection
- > PROPOSED BY INFERENCE
- > 1st book The Origin of Species describing natural selection
- described the process of sexual selection
- > The Descent of Man described how natural selection caused differences in females and males, and how these differences influenced females/males to act and look differently (driven by evolutionary change)
- Animal Emotions
- > Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals
- > compared physical appearance of species when experiencing emotions
- > observed that you can read the facial expressions of other animals because they are similar to our own
- > concluded must have a physiological basis for facial expressions
- > THEREFORE emotions are an outward expression of an internal physiological condition
108
Types of evolution that can drive differences from HWE
1. Directional Selection
- environment favors ONE phenotype and disfavors other two phenotypes so dominance
2. Stabilizing
- environment favors Aa, high number of heterozygotes under normal random mating
- > keeps species together, and inhibits speciation
3. Disruptive
- two different types of environments favoring both homozygous(AA and aa) and disfavoring heterozygotes(Aa)
- > drive population into extremes and leaves no intermediate phenotypes
- > could drive speciation
109
Transcriptomics
- is the study of the transcriptome
- the complete set of RNA transcripts that are produced by the genome, under specific circumstances or in a specific cell
- using high-through put methods, such as microarray analysis
110
Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium
- claims that in the absence of evolution the frequency of alleles for any trait in one generation will be the same frequency in the next generation if there is true random mating
- > a change in allele frequencies across generations indicate that some force of evolution is occurring
- Equation is (A^2 + 2Aa + a^2)
- > adds to 1
- > can calculate expected genotype frequencies
- if observed genotype frequencies are not equal to expected than traits show evidence of evolution
111
Ethology vs Comparative Psychology when studying animal behavior
- both studied animal behavior, but neither studied it the same way
- ethologists looked from an evolutionary background and believes that animal behavior is influenced by the past
112
Danchin: Beyond DNA: integrating inclusive inheritance into an extended theory of evolution
- Many biologists are calling for an ‘extended evolutionary synthesis’ that would
‘modernize the modern synthesis’ of evolution
- Biological information is typically considered as being transmitted across generations by the DNA sequence alone, but accumulating evidence indicates that both genetic and non-genetic inheritance, and the interactions between them, have important effects on evolutionary outcomes
- they review the evidence for such effects of epigenetic, ecological and cultural inheritance and parental effects, and outline methods that quantify the relative contributions of genetic
and non-genetic heritability to the transmission of phenotypic variation across generations.
RESULTS
- the theory of inheritance
that currently prevails also needs to be extended in
order to incorporate all non-genetic inheritance as
participating to the development and inheritance of the phenotype.
- By broadening the notion of fitness to include not just individual fitness but also the broader fitness of related individuals, we were able to make predictions regarding behaviour (such as kin selection, altruism and cooperation) that we could not otherwise explain.
- Likewise, broadening the notion of inheritance should allow us to resolve major evolutionary enigmas
- go beyond DNA in order to build a broader concept of evolution
- We call for a multidimensional modern synthesis that would merge the current modern synthesis with an inclusive view of inheritance into a single framework.
- In particular, this new theory
should include cultural inheritance, which has been
largely dismissed as insignificant in animal phenotypic inheritance
- the existence of numerous culturally transmitted traits
suggests that cultural (or social) inheritance is likely to have had a profound effect on evolution
- Similarly, epigenetic and ecological inheritances, as well as parental effects, currently emerge as new sources
of inheritance and heritability
113
Adaptation
- A characteristic that confers higher inclusive fitness to individuals than any other existing alternative exhibited by other individuals with the population
- a trait that has spread or is spreading or is being maintained in a population as a result of natural selection
114
Natural Selection
- Also direct selection
- The process that occurs when individuals differ in their traits and the differences are correlated with differences in reproductive success
- Natural selection can produce evolutionary change when these differences are inherited
- > within a population
115
Individual Selection
- The process of natural selection operating on the reproductive success of an individual
116
How genes control behavior?
- can identify specific genes and link them to behaviors by making model organisms with knockouts
Ex: created knockout mutation in fosB gene in mice
-> found significant difference in the expression of fosB and wiring of the brain
-> preoptic area is critical in learning to recognize pups
-> this malfunction in wiring is why mutant mothers failed to take care of their pups
117
Hormones affect on our system
- hormones influence our sensory system, and act on how we process information/respond to it
- affects your effectors, any part of physiology that operates your body (muscles)
- > not clear which pathway is initiated by these hormones
- > all of these systems are linked to your behaviors
- regulation of hormones is through both positive and negative feedback
- The cycle of hormone regulation comes full circle as hormones feedback on the sensory systems that started the cascade initially
118
Endocrine cells and peptide hormones
1. Peptide hormone synthesis occurs in the Golgi apparatus
2. Secretory vesicles deliver hormones to the blood vessels
3. Hormones get transported via blood to target organ
4. Hormone then bind to receptors on the target cells
5. Hormones are the broken down and recycled
119
Forces of Evolutionary change
1. Mutation
- change the alleles themselves and get a new trait
2. Genetic Drift
- random loss of alleles by chance
3. Migration (gene flow)
- movement of alleles from one generation to another
4. Natural Selection
- traits that inc indiv ability to survive
5. Sexual Selection
- give advantage to the individual in competition with other individuals of their own sex for mating
6. Group Selection
- allow kin groups to be more successful than other kin groups
120
Phenotype
- represents physical characteristics, or traits of that individual
- > morphological, physiological, behavioral etc
121
Nature vs Nurture in Comparative Physiology
1. Survival value
2. Homeostasis
3. Lab experiments
4. Model species
5. Sensory bias
6. Americans
122
Fixed Action Pattern (FAP)
- An innate, highly stereotyped response that is triggered by a well-defined, simple stimulus
- once the pattern is activated, the response is performed in its entirety, can not move on to next behavior until complete
ex: geese and the egg (putting back in nest)
