foundations of ethology

Question 1

what two aspects can hava an impact on animal behaviour?

Answer 1

• artificial selection
• natural selection

Question 2

How does natural selection act on behaviour and what are the requirements?

Answer 2

• some natural variation amongst indicidual
• natural is the selective agent. traits that better-suit an individual to their environment, and that can be inherited, genes for those traits are more likely to increase

requirements:

• variation in a trait
• fitness consequenc for a trait
• heritability (variation must have a genetic basis)

Question 3

define fitness in terms of evolution

Answer 3

fitness = an individual’s survival and rperoductive sucess

• depends on conditions
• relative fitness
• compared to other members of populations

Question 4

Briefly describe four artivitial selections for behaviour

Answer 4

1. Not all traits are heritable
   - behaviour is influenced by enviromental effects, learning, disease, etc.
2. Selection pressures change over time
   - traits may become maldaptive when environments change
3. Traits are not always independent of each other, so not all can be optimised by natural selection
   - e.g. genes can affect more than one trait
4. When considering domestic animals - remember that artificial seleciton has played a role in their phenotype

Question 5

What behavioural measure could we take to examine learning in Thorndike’s puzzle box experiment?

What is this type of learning called?

Answer 5

Time to escape

operant conditioning

Question 6

who are the two most famous behaviourists of the 20th century?

Answer 6

Skinner and Pavolov

Question 7

who are the founders of modern ethology

Answer 7

frisch, lorenz (importance of observation), tunberg (experients in natural conditions)

(jointly awarded Nobel prize in 1973)

Question 8

How does a behaviour affect survival and reproduction?

Answer 8

Funciton

Question 9

What internal or external stimuli trigger or control a behaviour?

Answer 9

Mechanisms/causation

Question 10

How does a behaviour arise or change during maturation?

Answer 10

Ontogony/development

Question 11

What is the origin of a behaviour?

Answer 11

evolution

Question 12

What are Tinbergen’s four questions/research themes?

Answer 12

1. What is the causation of behaviour? (proximate)
   - Mechanism. What elicits or controls or triggers a behaviour?
   - e.g. internal/external factors (e.g. nerves, hormones, environment)
2. How does the behaviour develop? (proximate)
   - Ontogeny. How does a behaviour arise/change/develop as an individual matures
   - e.g. how a behaviour is affected by experiences vs. innate tendencies.
3. What is the function of the behaviour? (ultimate)
   - Adaptive advantage. How does a behavoiour affect an animal’s survival and reproduction?
4. How did the behaviour evolve? (ultimate)
   - What is the origin/evolutionary history of behaviour?

Question 13

Ultimate question in studying dwarf mongoose behaviour

what are the origins of this social behaviour?

1. examine phylogeny - related animal groups
2. genetic and behaviour evidence (Veron et a., 2004) suggests ancestor of mangooses was solitary and ate vertebrates

Answer 13

1. compare related species, see if there are shared behavioural traits
2. some lineages switched to insectivory during Pliocene

and reduced competition for food increased likelihood of social behaviour

Question 14

(proximate question)

What are the characteristics of a dominant animal (dwarf mangoose)?

Answer 14

dominant females have been found to be older

weight also has an influence (creel, 2005)

Question 15

(proximate question)

how do reproductive capabilities develop/not?

Answer 15

1. reproductive suppression occurs between dominants and subordinates
   - behaviour e.g. aggression
   - hormones e.g. in dominants’ urine or faeces, which suppress reproductive development
2. males - behaviour only; hormones levels are the same
3. females - behavioural and hormonal control
   - e.g. breeder has higher oestrogen levels
   - but, older, higher ranked helpers have high levels too, good chance of breeding if disperse. So behavioural suppression must ease to keep them as helpers

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Question 16

describe the model action pattern in goose and her eggs and list three more examples for model action patterns in other animals

Answer 16

• the duck reachers out stretching her neck to roll an egg back into the nest
• if she can’t reach it, she’ll get up and roll it back to the nest
• the duck will then sit back on the nest to continue breeding the egg
• when the egg is removed after the duck is triggered (reaching out for egg) it will continue to follow the patterns of movement to roll back the egg
  1. robins (males and red bellies)
  2. Tinbergen’s classic with the three-spined stickleback
  3. begging behaviour in gull chicks

Question 17

What could be advantageous about animals reacting to sign stimuli?

Answer 17

not wasting energy on processing all the different stimuli in their environment