Animal Behavior

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Animal Behavior
Male Jumping Spider (Habronattus icenoglei)
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Definition

• Behavior is the response of an animal to
  environmental stimuli.
• The study of behavior is called ethology.

Ethologists are interested both in proximal and
ultimate reasons for behaviors.
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Ethology
Evolution
Psychology
Ecology
Behavior
Genetics
Physiology
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Behavior and genetics

• Innate behavior Stereotyped behaviors that are
  based on preset neural pathways and are evoked by
  a key stimulus.

Learned behavior a behavior the animal has
developed based on its experience with a
particular stimulus.
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Behavior, Ecology, and Evolution

• Behavioral ecology is the study of the adaptive
  values of certain behaviors.
• Are all behaviors adaptive?
• How is a particular behavior adaptive?
• Since behaviors affect fitness and often have a
  genetic component, behaviors can evolve.

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Types of behaviors

• Migratory behavior
• Territorial behavior
• Animal cognition
• Animal communication
• Reproductive behavior
• Social behavior
• Foraging behavior

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Migratory Behavior

• Migration long, two-way movements of animals,
  usually seasonal
• Migration often involves precise migration
  patterns and highly specific destinations.

In some animals, these behaviors are purely
innate in others, there appears to be some
learning involved.
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Territorial Behavior

• Any behavior designed to maintain an animals
  exclusive use of a an area.
• Territorial behavior is costly.
• Energy costs
• Increased visibility to predators
• Increased risk of injury in encounters with
  competitors

• So why be territorial?
• Increased food availability or foraging area
• Exclusive access to mates (increased
  reproductive success)
• Access to refuges from predators

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Animal Cognition

• Question Do animals think?
• thinking includes problem-solving, planning,
  deception, and specific vocabulary
• Problem-solving is done by chimpanzees (and other
  primates) and some birds (corvids and others)

Planning is also used by various primates and
corvids Deception and predator-specific
vocabulary are thought to occur in certain
primate species
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Reproductive Behavior

• Reproductive strategy the set of behaviors an
  animal uses to maximize its reproductive success.
  

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Social Systems

• Some animals live in social groups
• Benefits of sociality
• Shared food sources
• Kin selection
• Protection from predation
• Larger prey items

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Social Systems

• Eusociality
• Invertebrates hymenopterans, isopterans
• Vertebrates naked mole rats
• Other social systems are highly variable in
  composition and seasonality.

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Foraging Behavior

• Foraging behaviors should maximize efficiency.
• Foraging behaviors are innate, but may be altered
  by ecology, by season, by predator abundance, by
  abundance of conspecifics, or by food abundance.
• Foraging behavior is necessary, but can be
  dangerous. There are tradeoffs.

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Observational methods

• Ad Libitum take notes on everything you see.
• Focal Sampling One animal, observing a defined
  set of behaviors.
• Instantaneous/Scan Sampling At set time points,
  note behaviors of one or more animals.
• All occurances One behavior, note every time it
  is performed.

• Each method has advantages and disadvantages and
  can cause different biases.

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Experiment

• Today we will test habitat selection in isopods,
  and foraging preferences in crickets.

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Treatment A
Treatment B
Phototaxis Chemotaxis Hydrotaxis
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Cricket Apparatus
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You MUST have your lab printed for next week!