2. Behavior
• What an animal
does & How an
animal does it!
• Think of all of the
behaviors of your
pet...or a friends’
pet. List them and
classify them as
either being
genetically “innate”
3. ETHOLOGY
the study of animal behavior with emphasis on the behavioral patterns that
occur in natural environments.
Pioneers in the Study of Animal Behavior
Karl von Frisch Niko Tinbergen Konrad Lorenz
4. Behavioral Ecology
• Behavioral Ecology emphasizes
evolutionary hypothesis.
• Based on the fact that animals will act
in a way that will increase their
Darwinian fitness. What does “fitness”
refer to in Darwinian terms?
5. What is evolutionary fitness?
• Evolutionary fitness measures how many
viable, fertile offspring an individual (or an
allele) leaves in the next and subsequent
generations, relative to others in the
population.
Adaptive behavior
• An adaptive behavior increases an
individual’s evolutionary fitness relative to
other individuals in the population.
6. When we observe behavior
we may ask both proximate
& ultimate questions OR
offer proximate or ultimate
explanations.
7. Proximate questions
about behavior
• Proximate questions address the
mechanisms that produce a behavior:
the environmental stimuli that trigger a
behavior and the genetic and physiological
mechanisms that make it possible.
• For example,
–How does an animal carry out a
particular behavior?
8. Ultimate questions about
behavior
• Ultimate questions address the
evolutionary significance of a behavior:
how a behavior increases the evolutionary
fitness of the animal demonstrating it,
helping it to survive and reproduce in its
environment.
• For example,
–Why does the animal show this
behavior?
9. Niko Tinbergen
Suggested 4 questions that
must be answered to fully
understand any behavior.
These questions are either
ultimate questions or
proximate questions.
10. Proximate vs Ultimate
• What is the mechanistic basis of the
behavior, including chemical, anatomical, &
physiological mechanisms?
• What is the evolutionary history of the
behavior?
• How does development of the animal, from
zygote to mature individual, influence the
behavior?
• How does the behavior contribute to survival
& reproduction (fitness)?
PROXIMATE
ULTIMATE
PROXIMATE
ULTIMATE
11. 11
Q#1: Red-crowned cranes breed in spring
and early summer. Choose a proximate
explanation:
A. Breeding is most likely
to be successful in
spring and early
summer.
B. Increasing day length
triggers the release of
breeding hormones.
C. Ample food is available
for chicks at this time.
Increasing day length
triggers the release of
breeding hormones.
12. 12
A. Breeding is most likely to
be successful in spring
and early summer.
B. Hormonal changes in the
spring trigger breeding
behaviors.
C. Breeding is triggered by
the effect of increased day
length on the birds’
photoreceptors.
Q#2: Red-crowned cranes breed in spring
and early summer. Choose an ultimate
explanation:
Breeding is most likely to
be successful in spring
and early summer.
13. Two Classifications of Behavior –
• ADAPTIVE ADVANTAGE
1. innate behaviors
• automatic, fixed, “built-in”, no “learning curve”
• despite different environments,
all individuals exhibit the behavior
• ex. early survival, reproduction, kinesis, taxis
2. learned behaviors
• modified by experience
• variable, changeable
• flexible with a complex & changing environment
14. Innate behaviors
• Fixed action patterns (FAP)
– sequence of behaviors
essentially unchangeable
& usually conducted to completion
once started
– sign stimulus
• the releaser that triggers a
FAP
15. Innate: Fixed Action Patterns (aka: sight
stimulus)
Digger wasp egg rolling in geese
What about other objects?
Sphex wasps drop paralyzed insect near
the opening of the nest. Before bringing
the prey into the next the wasp goes in to
inspect. If the prey gets moved the wasp
will get it again & do the same thing over.
16. Innate: Directed & Undirected
Movements
Kinesis: change in speed of
an animal’s movement in
response to a stimulus.
-speeds up in unfavorable
environment
-slows down in favorable
environment
Taxis: movement towards
or away from the stimulus
19. Konrad Lorentz
He examined animals in their natural
environments and concluded that instinct
plays a key role in animal behavior
From his observations Lorenz
established the concept of
imprinting, the process by which an
animal follows an object, normally its
biological mother. He found that for
a short time after hatching, chicks
are genetically inclined to identify
their mother’s sound and appearance
and thereby form a permanent bond
with her.
25. Spatial Learning
• Associative learning:
– Animals associate attributes of a location
(landmarks) with the reward it gains by being able
to identify and return to that location.
Nikolass Tinbergen- observed wasps used pine cones
as markers to locate their nest.
When Tinbergen removed the pine cones the wasps
were unable to locate their nest.
27. Observational Learning
• Animals copy the behavior of another animal
without having experienced any prior positive
reinforcement with the behavior.
29. Survival Responses
• Fight or flight response
– Triggered by stress
• Adrenaline & cortisol is produced which dilates the blood
vessels, increases heart rate, increases the release of
sugar from the liver, slow digestion to conserve energy…
• Avoidance response
– Avoid stressful situations
• EX: areas where predators can hide or areas with little
camouflage, unknown organisms, or things in their
environment that appear inappropriate.
30. Survival Responses
• Alarm Response
– Triggered when presence of a predator or other
animal that’s a threat is detected.
– Warning is given for other in their group.
31. Foraging Behaviors
• Herds, flocks, & schools
– Most in a group are hidden
– Individuals in the group can trade off jobs
(foraging and watching for predators)
– Can mob their predator and protect their young
• Packs
– Corner and attack prey with much success
Packs
against
32. Social Behavior
• Interactions between individuals
– Develop as evolutionary adaptations
• Communication/language
• Agonistic Behaviors
• Dominance Hierarchy
• Cooperation
• Altruistic Behavior
34. Two major discoveries about honey bees.
First, he demonstrated that honey bees have
color vision.
Karl von Frisch
He trained bees to feed on a dish of
sugar water set on a colored card. He
then set the colored card in the middle
of an array of gray-toned cards
State a null hypothesis and an
alternative hypothesis
Watch Bee Dance video
Second, he showed that honey bees use
a dance language to communicate food
locations to other bees.
38. Altruistic Behavior
kin selection
• increasing survival of close relatives
passes these genes on to the next
generation
How can this be of adaptive value? Warning Calls
39. • In naked mole rat populations
– Nonreproductive individuals may sacrifice their lives
protecting the reproductive individuals from
predators
Figure 51.33
40. Communication by scent
Female mosquito use CO2
concentrations to locate victims
Spider using moth sex
pheromones, to lure its
prey
When a minnow or catfish is injured: An alarm substance in the
fish’s skin disperses in the water, inducing a fright response
among fish in the area
Do humans exhibit Fixed Action Patterns? This question was addressed by Irenaeus Eibl-Eibesfeldt and Hans Hass who worked at the Max-Planck-Institute for Behavioural Physiology in Germany. They created a Film Archive of Human Ethology of unstaged and minimally disturbed social behaviour.
They filmed people across a wide range of cultures with a right-angle reflex lens camera i.e. the subjects did not realize that they were being filmed because the camera lens did not appear to be pointing at them! Eibl-Eibesfeldt has identified and recorded on film, several human Fixed Action Patterns or human 'universals' e.g. smiling and the "eyebrow-flash"
Eibl-Eibesfeldt took these pictures of a Himba woman from Namibia (SW-Africa). She shows a rapid brow raising (between the second and third still images) which coincides with raising her eyelids. Because all the cultures he examined showed this behaviour, Eibl-Eibesfeldt concluded that it was a human 'universal' or Fixed Action Pattern.
Some Sphex wasps drop a paralyzed insect near the opening of the nest. Before taking provisions into the nest, the sphex first inspects the nest, leaving the prey outside. During the sphex's inspection of the nest an experimenter can move the prey a few inches away from the opening of the nest. When the sphex emerges from the nest ready to drag in the prey, it finds the prey missing. The sphex quickly locates the moved prey, but now its behavioral "program" has been reset. After dragging the prey back to the opening of the nest, once again the sphex is compelled to inspect the nest, so the prey is again dropped and left outside during another stereotypical inspection of the nest. This iteration can be repeated again and again, with the sphex never seeming to notice what is going on, never able to escape from its genetically-programmed sequence of behaviors. Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel Dennett have used this mechanistic behavior as an example of how seemingly thoughtful behavior can actually be quite mindless, the opposite of human behavioral flexibility that we experience as free will
The sow bugs become more active in dry areas and less active in humid areas. Though sow bugs do not move toward or away from specific conditions, their increased movement under dry conditions increases the chance that they will leave a dry area and encounter a moist area. And since they slow down in a moist area, they tend to stay there once they encounter it.
In contrast to a kinesis, a taxis is a more or less automatic, oriented movement toward (a positive taxis) or away from (a negative taxis) some stimulus. For example, many stream fish, such as trout, exhibit positive rheotaxis (from the Greek rheos, current); they automatically swim or orient themselves in an upstream direction (toward the current). This taxis keeps the fish from being swept away and keeps them facing the direction from which food will come.
View Waggle Dance AVI file: waggledance180x135.avi
View Lifewire territoriality video: ch. 53
Review setting up a behavior experiment:
The luring function of sex pheromones is a perfect way for predators to get heir prey without having to work too hard. The spider Mastophora hutchinsoni spreads sex pheromones of moths, using them as allomones. This way he can lure about enough moths to sustain. When the moths fly in, convinced they are about to mate, the spider shoots a sticky ball on wire towards them. As they stick to the ball, he drags them in and eats them.