Life 53- Animal Behaviour Flashcards
Releaser
Sensory stimulus that triggers performance of a stereotyped behaviour pattern.
Circannual rhythm
A rhythm of growth of activity that recurs on a yearly basis
Conspecifics
Individuals of the same species
Polygyny
Mating system in which one male mates with multiple females.
Optimal foraging theory
The application of a cost-benefit approach of feeding behaviour to identify the fitness value of feeding choices.
Kin selection
The component of inclusive fitness resulting from helping the survival of relatives containing the same alleles by descent from a common ancestor
Altruism
Pertaining to behaviour that benefits other individuals at a cost to the individual who performs it.
Circadian rhythm
A rhythm of growth or activity that recurs about every 24 hours
Ethology
An approach to the study of animal behaviour that focuses on studying many species in natural environments and addresses questions about the evolution of behaviour.
Habitat
The particular environment in which an organism lives
Proximate cause
The immediate genetic, physiological, neurological, and developmental mechanism responsible for a behaviour or morphology
Inclusive fitness
The sum of an individual’s genetic contribution to subsequent generations both via production of its own offspring and via its influence on the survival of relatives who are not direct descendants.
Sensitive period
The life stage during which some particular type of learning must take place, or during which it occurs much more easily than at other times. Typical of song learning among birds.
Polyandry
Mating system in which one female mates with multiple males
Eusocial
Pertaining to a social group that includes no reproductive individuals, as in honey bees.
Haploidploidy
A sex determination mechanism in which diploid individuals (which develop from fertilised eggs) are female and haploid individuals (which develop form unfertilised eggs) are male; typical of hymenopterans
Ultimate case
In ethology, the evolutionary processes that produced an animal’s capacity and tendency to behave in particular ways.
Homing
The ability to return over long distances to a specific site.
Cost-benefit analysis
An approach to evolutionary studies that assumes an animal has a limited amount of time and energy to devote to each of its activities, and that each activity has fitness costs as well as benefits
Hamiltion’s rule
The principle that, for an apparent altruistic behaviour to be adaptive, the fitness benefit of that act to the recipient times the degree of relatedness of the performer and the recipient must be greater than the cost to the performer.
Risk cost
The increases chance of being injured or killed as a result of performing a behaviour, compared to resting.
Lek
A display ground within which male animals compete for an defend small display areas as a means of demonstrating their territorial prowess and winning opportunities to mate.
Imprinting
In animal behaviour, a rapid form of learning in which an animal learns, during a brief critical period, to make a particular response, which is maintained for life, to some object or other organism
Suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN)
In mammals, two clusters of neurones just above the optic chasm that act as the master circadian clock
Opportunity cost
The sum of the benefits an animal forfeits by not being able to perform som other behaviour during the time when it is performing a given behaviour.
Energetic cost
The difference between the energy an animal expends in performing a behaviour and the energy it would have expended has it rested
Fixed action pattern
In ethology, a genetically determined behaviour that is performed without learning, stereotypic (performed the same way each time), and not modifiable by learning.
Communication
A signal from one organism (or cell) that alters the functioning or behaviour of another organism (or cell)
Individual fitness
That component of inclusive fitness resulting from an organism producing its own offspring
