Lecture 2 - Causation and Development of Behaviour Flashcards
What stimuli causes a neuroendocrine response?
Nervous and endocrine systems
What stimuli gives an experiential response?
Learned and cognitive response
What factors cause behaviour?
- internal
- external
- context dependent
- errors
What are the two kinds of external causes of behaviour?
Abiotic and biotic
What are internal factors which cause behaviour?
Biological rhythms
- Daily time schedules are reset by zeitgebers
- Annual movements are in tune with seasonal change
What are the motivation of internal causes of behaviour?
- Homeostatic - makes the physiology work more efficiently
- non-homeostatic - usually for reproductive purposes
What are the internal factors which have long term changes over the years in deer?
- Autumn and winter (during the rut) - hard antlers which will eventually be shed
- Spring and summer (pre-rut) - soft antler which is a living tissue growing from the base
What are circadian rhythms?
Behaviour synced to a 24 hour cycle
Example of circadian rhythms in mudskippers
come out of water and graze on algae on the beach, away from other species, for this, they need to understand tide patters
What is homeostasis?
Remaining the same state in a dynamic equilibrium
What does homeostasis do for behaviour?
Regulates hunger and thirst and temperature regulation
Does behaviour promote homeostasis?
Normal homeostatic mechanisms may be over-ridden if changes to behaviour increase overall fitness.
- This is generally reproduction
Example of salmon breeding in homeostasis being overidden
Salmon hatch in fresh water rivers. They travel to the sea, live there for 6 years, and then, by sense of smell, travel back to their home river and lay their eggs there. When travelling back, they stop eating and put all their effort into going back home so their eggs are brought up in a safe space. Means salmon die after breeding as they starve themselves.
Examples of biotic external factors in causes of behaviour
- population density
- sex ratio
Example of abiotic factors in causes of behaviour
- Light
- Temperature
- Tide
- Landmarks, features in a habitat
Example of Abiotic Factors that Initiate Behaviour
Indigo Bunting
- Use queues from the environment to understand whether they are in the right location when migrating. They will have stopover points that are fine for them to stay overnight to rest, but not to last them the whole of winter. They will understand this through the environmental queues.
What are two examples of errors in behavioural responses?
Misconception or misidentification of a stimuli
1. Swans think from above the glistening tarmac is a river so land on motorways
2. Hatchling turtles - they hatch in the nighttime when there is a full moon and they know this from looking at the brightest thing in the sky and follow it into the sea. By us developing hotels etc on the beachfront, they go the wrong way and end up in the town, getting lost.
What is social learning?
Behaviour learnt by observing the actions of others, and then replicating them
What are the 6 different types of learning?
- innate behavior
- Maturation
- chance
- Self-learning
- Learning from others/ social learning
- Insight learning
What is maturation?
some behaviours mature over time with individual. e.g. through puberty
What is chance?
something completely beyond animals control dictates how they can perform in future
What is self-learning?
the more they practice, the more they get good at it
What is insight learning?
A flash of inspiration where an animal works out the problem that they never have had to before
What are the six key characteristics of a fixed action pattern according to Lorenz
- Stereotyped
- Complex
- Species-characteristic
- Released
- Triggered
- Independent of experience
Define the maturation of behaviour
Behaviours change or start to be expressed at predictable stages as the individual ages.
What is the facilitated learning hypothesis?
Behaviour developed by chance
- determines by a single/ few specific environmental events experienced at crucial stages in life
e.g.
- temperature
- diet
What are the difference types of self-learning?
- Imprinting
- Conditioning
- Habituation
- Discriminative learning
- Associative learning
What is conditioning?
Changing your response to a stimuli
What is habituation?
No longer need to respond to a stimulus if you don’t need to
What is discriminative learning?
To discriminate between stimuli
e.g. beg for food from mum and hide from predators
What is associative learning example?
when a river starts flowing it will bring this particular fish - understand the queues
What is an example of conditioning?
Skinners box
- provide an insight into the time taken to problem solve
What is the rank of self-learning where it shows decreasing effects of genes and increasing effects of environment
- Innate behaviour
- Maturation
- Chance
- Self-learning
- Learning from others
- Insight
