lecture 20

Question 1

What is a behavior?

Answer 1

A response to external and internal cues.

Question 2

What is a major example of an external cue?

Answer 2

Odorants (especially for fish)

Question 3

What are odorants? and what is the most common odorant?

Answer 3

Odorants include amino acids, bile salts, and pheromones.

The most common odorant is that of the Amino Acid.

Question 4

What Odorant dose Arash look at for his thesis?

Answer 4

He looks at Amino acids

Question 5

Hoe dose an animal detect Odorants?

Answer 5

Odorants get detected by the olfactory system.

Question 6

What behaviors are made in response to an odorant?

Answer 6

There are many, odorants can be for finding food, escaping predators, or mating.

Question 7

How do most studies examine the interaction of animal and odorant?

Answer 7

On a 1-to-1 basis.

Super unrealistic for them to do this btw.

Question 8

What is arashes thesis looking at directly?

Answer 8

How animals response (zebrafish) when exposed to many, and sometimes contrasting odorants. such as predator and prey odorants.

Question 9

What is an attraction que defined as?

Answer 9

Spending more time in a region where the cue is present.

Question 10

What is an avoidance cue defined as?

Answer 10

Spending less time in an area where the cue is present.

Question 11

What behavior do we see in zebrafish when they are in an area with a attraction cue?

Answer 11

We see that they move around and search for things a lot. ie looking for food

Question 12

What behavior do we see in zebrafish when they are in an areas with avoidance cues?

Answer 12

We see them freeze in place.

Question 13

When a zebra fish is placed in an environment with low amounts of food extract present what change in behavior would we expect to see? why?

Answer 13

They show very little change in behavior, as this low volume of food in their environment is not enough for them to put the effort into finding the source of the food.

Question 14

When a zebra fish is placed in an environment with high amounts of food extract present what change in behavior would we expect to see? why?

Answer 14

We would expect to see an increase in time spent in the zone of odor flow, swim speed, and total distance travelled.

This is because the Zebra fish is looking for the food.

Question 15

What is L-alanine?

Answer 15

A attraction cue that mimics food.

it is commonly found in fish prey mussels and elicits a forging behavior.

Question 16

What is L-serine?

Answer 16

A avoidance cue that mimics the presence of predictors

It is found in mammalian skin, and in particular fingerprints.

Question 17

When fish learn to avoid a cue sush as L-serine what is it called?

Answer 17

a adaptive response

Question 18

What is L-cysteine?

Answer 18

A avoidance cue that is found in dead/spoiled fish flesh(hydrogen-sulfide) .

It gives an off smell and taste to animals who encounter it, and zebra fish are born with an avoidance response to this Amino Acid.

Question 19

What is it called when an animal is born with an avoidance behavior, like the Zebrafish and L-cysteine?

Answer 19

It is called an innate response.

Question 20

What is phenotypic copying?

Answer 20

When one animal observers another animals response to a stimuli, and then copies that response rather than making their own.

Question 21

When a zebra fish is in a environment with nothing else present, what is this behavior called?

Answer 21

Baseline behavior

Question 22

What was the strongest Attraction cue? at what concentration?

Answer 22

0,05mM of L-alanine

Question 23

What happens when a zebra fish is exposed to 0.1mM of L-alanine? and at 0.5mM?

Answer 23

We see an avoidance response, as there was too much stimuli for the fish to take in at once, making the attraction into an avoidance.

at 0.5mM we see no defined attraction or avoidance response as there is simply way too much in the environment for the fish to decode.

Question 24

What is it called when a fish reacts both in attraction and avoidance to a cue depending on the concentration?

Answer 24

It is called a biphasic response.

Question 25

What response did the lab fish have to L-serine?

Answer 25

None, because it is a adaptive response they need to learn to be avoidance towards it. they haven’t seen it do bad or good so they did nothing in its presence,

Question 26

What was the strongest avoidance cue? at what concentration?

Answer 26

0.1mM of L-cysteine

Question 27

What behavior do we see when 0.05mM of L-alanine and 0.1mM of L-cysteine are mixed together the fish is exposed to them?

Answer 27

We see an avoidance response.

Question 28

Why would we expect to see an avoidance response when zebra fish are exposed to both strong attraction and avoidance responses?

Answer 28

we would expect to see an avoidance response as the fear of being eaten is greater than the want to eat.

Question 29

How low of a concentration of L-cysenie was needed before attraction was seen in the mixture (L-alanine & L– cystenie)

Answer 29

We would need to decrease the concentration of L-cysteine from 0.1mM to 0.001mM in order for attraction to be seen again.

Question 30

Why would you need such a massive decrease in the avoidance cue in order to see attraction once again?

Answer 30

The risk of being eaten has to be so low that the animal will risk it in the opportunity to gather food.

Question 31

Can you increase the attraction cue in order to overcome the avoidance cue?

Answer 31

No you cannot, the will to eat is never stronger than the fear of being eaten.

Question 32

How did arash determine that these were in fact caused by the sense of smell rather than other sense?

Answer 32

He removed the fishes sense of smell, and attempted the experiment once again and saw no results. Confirming that it is from smell