territorial defence Flashcards
what is territoriality?
the defence or maintenance of an area to the exclusion of others, typically same-sex conspecifics
can do this by advertising/patrolling/fighting
benefits and costs of defending
costs: injury, energy expenditure, reduced foraging, predation and reduced paternal care
benefits: food abundance and familiarity, mate attraction and maintenance and offspring protection
what is infanticide?
the killing of young offspring by mature animal of the same species
it is an example of sexual conflict
(lions, gorillas and langurs)
when to defend your territory ..
when resources are limited
an example would be the golden winged sunbird, in the morning they do not defend their territories because there is a lot of nectar however, when nectar is low in the afternoon they defend
what is sociobiology?
extension of biology and evolutionary theory that attempts to explain social organisation
two candidate mechanism for quantiative cognition
subtilising - perceptual estimation mechanism (limit 7)
object file system - precise representations of discrete items (limit 4)
distinguishing groups of numbers (relative numerousness)
when he ratio between numbers is smaller eg 2:6=0.33 then correctly identifying which group has more is easier. if the ratio is high 9:10= 0.9 then it is harder
weber’s law in terms of number cognition
the change in a stimulus that will be just noticeable is a constant ratio of the original stimulus
what is the analogue magnitude system
a cognitive mechanism used to estimate whether two quantities differ in magnitude, it is based on webers law
(can compute large quantities but only approximately)
gambling food
know when to gamble food, if there is a reasonable chance of getting more
neural evidence for quantitative cognition
two key areas, the PFC and the intrapartietal sulcus (IPS)
single PFC neutrons are tuned for specific numerosities and the lateral intraparietal region encodes accumulated magnitudes
