Unit 1 - Animal Behavior and Evolution Flashcards
What types of feedback exist in regulation?
Positive and Negative
When is a plant seed considered in dormancy?
When a seed is dry and non-germinating and the metabolic activity is minimized. A seed can be dormant for years.
What is an environmental cue?
A environmental event that signals for an action or change in an organism. An example is the amount of water in the soil can be a cue for the seed to germinate.
What are environmental cycles?
The process in which elements are used and reused by different parts of the environment. Example include the nitrogen, carbon, phosphorous and water cycles.
What is evolution and how does it happen?
Evolution is the change of in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation. It can be caused by mutations, genetic drift, gene flow and natural selection.
What is biological fitness?
It is the capability of an individual in a population to reproduce and pass on its genes to the next generation. The more fit a genotype is for the environment the more likely that genotype will be successful and more common in the environment.
What are fixed action patterns?
Fixed action patterns are unlearned (innate) behaviors that are automatically triggered by a stimulus. They are unchangable and once started usually carried to completion. An example is the agressive behavior of male stickleback to the color red.
What are fossils and how do scientists use them?
Fossils are remains or traces of dead organisms from the past that are found in sedimentary rocks within the layers of strata. Scientists use them to get a glimpse into the organisms that populated Earth at the time the layer was formed.
What is the fossil record and what does it tell us?
The fossil record is all of the fossils that have been discovered and what infomation has been discovered from them. The fossil record is used to documnent the history and changes in life on Earth.
What is genetic variation?
Genetic variation is the differences between individuals in their genes and DNA.
What is habituation?
Habituation is the decrease in the response to a stimulus after repeated presentations of the stimulus. An example is a bell ringing in the background of a room would be eventually not noticed by the indivdual over time.
What is hibernation?
Hibernation is a state of inactivity and the slowing of metabolic activities. It is characterized by low body temperature, slow heart beat and breathing. It is usually used to conserve energy during harsh conditions. For example, bears hibernating during the cold winter months.
How is an organism’s fitness enhanced by spacial learning?
Spacial learning establishes a memory of an environments spacial sturcture and can help in the location of nest sites, hazards, food, and perspective mates.
What is a cognitive map?
A cognitive map is a representation in the nervous system of the spacial relationships between objects in an animals surroundings. Animals that use cognitive maps navigate more flexibly and efficiently. An example is Clark’s Nutcracker that stores 30,000 pine seeds in thousands of hiding places and during the winter can relocate them.
What are the three types of mating relationships?
Promiscuous (no strong pair bonds), monogamous (one male mating with one female), and polygamous (an individual of one sex mating with several of the other)
How is altruism beneficial to an animal population?
Altruism lowers the fitness of an individual but will increase the overall fitness of others. An example of this is the Belding’s Ground Squirrel, where an individual gives a high pitched alarm when a predator is around, warning the population but bringing attention to itself.
What influences circadian rhythm?
The circadian rhythm is influenced by the periods of daylight and darkness in the environment.
What is coevolution?
Coevolution occurs when changes in at least two species reciprocally affect each other’s evolution. For example, bumblebees and flowers have coevolved so that they are both dependent on each other’s survival.
What is condensation?
Condensation is change in the physical state of water from gaseous form to liquid form.
What can cause convergent evolution?
Convergent evolution can be caused by different species being exposed to similar environments.
What are some examples of courtship behavior?
A male fiddler crab waves its claw to attract females. The courtship display of blue-footed boobies involves the male high-stepping, a behavior that calls the female’s attention to his bright blue feet.
What are crepuscular animals?
Crepuscular animals are animals that are active primarily during twilight.
On which two observations and inferences did Darwin base his argument for natural selection?
Observation 1: Members of a population often vary in their inherited traits. Observation 2: All species can produce more offspring than their environment can support, and many of these offspring fail to survive and reproduce. Inference 1: Individuals whose inherited traits give them a higher probability of surviving and reproducing in a given environment tend to leave more offspring than other individuals. Inference 2: This unequal ability of individuals to survive and reproduce will lead to the accumulation of favorable traits in the population over generations.
What can cause denaturation of proteins?
If the pH, salt concentration, temperature, or other aspects of the environment are altered, a protein can be denatured.
What are some examples of disaccharides and where can they be found?
Maltose is an ingredient used in brewing beer. Sucrose is table sugar. Lactose is present in milk.
What is diurnal rhythm?
Diurnal rhythm is the oscillation of the day and night cycle every 24 hours.
What is divegent Evolution?
Divergent evolution is when 2 different species that have a common ancestor evolve differently. Convergent evolution is when 2 different species with different ancestral origins evolve to have similar features.
What is an example of convergent evolution?
The ability to glide through the air evolved independently in the sugar glider and the flying squirrel.
What is the courtship behavior of the fruit fly?
Orienting: the male visually recognizes the female, the female releases chemicals detected by the male’s sense of smell. Tapping: the male taps the female’s abdomen with a foreleg. Singing: the male extends and vibrates a wing, producing a courtship song.
Which 2 of Tinbergen’s 4 questions ask about proximate causation of animal behavior?
- What stimulus elicits the behavior, and what physiological mechanisms mediate the response? 2. How does the animal’s experience during growth and development influence the response?
What are hydrogen bonds and why are they important in biological systems?
A hydrogen bond is the electromagnetic attraction between polar molecules in which hydrogen is bound to a larger atom, such as oxygen or nitrogen. They are classified as weak bonds because they are easily and rapidly formed and broken under normal biological conditions. They are important because their presence explains many of the properties of water that allow life to exist, and they are used to stabilize and determine the structure of large macromolecules. They are also involved in the mechanism of enzyme catalysis.
What is hydrolysis?
Hydrosysis is a chemical reaction that breaks bonds between two molecules by the addition of water, and it functions in disassembly of polymers to monomers.
What is a climograph and how are they useful?
A climograph is a plot of the annual mean temperature and precipitation in a particular region. They are useful in highlighting the importance of climate on the dstribution of biomes.
The subunits of proteins are ____________.
Amino acids.
Use a diagram of the phospholipid bilayer to explain what “amphipathic” means.
Diagram can be viewed here: https://figures.boundless-cdn.com/19976/large/0302-phospholipid-bilayer.jpe; In an amphipathic structure, there will be a hydrophobic, or water-hating, part, which will not touch water (in this case the tails of the lipids), and there will be a hydrophilic, or water-loving part, which will touch water (in this case, the heads of the lipids). The cell membrane is composed of a phospholipid bilayer, which means that the phosopholipids form a two-layer structure, with the hydrophilic heads facing outside towards the cytoplasm and the extracellular fluid and the hydrophobic tails sandwiched in between the heads.
