Life 53- Animal Behaviour

Question 1

Releaser

Answer 1

Sensory stimulus that triggers performance of a stereotyped behaviour pattern.

Question 2

Circannual rhythm

Answer 2

A rhythm of growth of activity that recurs on a yearly basis

Question 3

Conspecifics

Answer 3

Individuals of the same species

Question 4

Polygyny

Answer 4

Mating system in which one male mates with multiple females.

Question 5

Optimal foraging theory

Answer 5

The application of a cost-benefit approach of feeding behaviour to identify the fitness value of feeding choices.

Question 6

Kin selection

Answer 6

The component of inclusive fitness resulting from helping the survival of relatives containing the same alleles by descent from a common ancestor

Question 7

Altruism

Answer 7

Pertaining to behaviour that benefits other individuals at a cost to the individual who performs it.

Question 8

Circadian rhythm

Answer 8

A rhythm of growth or activity that recurs about every 24 hours

Question 9

Ethology

Answer 9

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.

Question 10

Habitat

Answer 10

The particular environment in which an organism lives

Question 11

Proximate cause

Answer 11

The immediate genetic, physiological, neurological, and developmental mechanism responsible for a behaviour or morphology

Question 12

Inclusive fitness

Answer 12

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.

Question 13

Sensitive period

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

Polyandry

Answer 14

Mating system in which one female mates with multiple males

Question 15

Eusocial

Answer 15

Pertaining to a social group that includes no reproductive individuals, as in honey bees.

Question 16

Haploidploidy

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Ultimate case

Answer 17

In ethology, the evolutionary processes that produced an animal’s capacity and tendency to behave in particular ways.

Question 18

Homing

Answer 18

The ability to return over long distances to a specific site.

Question 19

Cost-benefit analysis

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Hamiltion’s rule

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

Risk cost

Answer 21

The increases chance of being injured or killed as a result of performing a behaviour, compared to resting.

Question 22

Lek

Answer 22

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.

Question 23

Imprinting

Answer 23

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

Question 24

Suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN)

Answer 24

In mammals, two clusters of neurones just above the optic chasm that act as the master circadian clock

Question 25

Opportunity cost

Answer 25

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.

Question 26

Energetic cost

Answer 26

The difference between the energy an animal expends in performing a behaviour and the energy it would have expended has it rested

Question 27

Fixed action pattern

Answer 27

In ethology, a genetically determined behaviour that is performed without learning, stereotypic (performed the same way each time), and not modifiable by learning.

Question 28

Communication

Answer 28

A signal from one organism (or cell) that alters the functioning or behaviour of another organism (or cell)

Question 29

Individual fitness

Answer 29

That component of inclusive fitness resulting from an organism producing its own offspring