Lecture 9: Animal Behavior

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Lecture 9 Animal Behavior
Reading Chapter 52
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• Behavior what it is and what it isnt
• Two major types
• Fixed Action (innate or instinct)
• Learned Behavior
• Evolutionarily important aspects of behavior
• Sociobiology
• Fitness
• Selfish vs unselfish behavior (altruism)
• Kin selection

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Fixed Action pattern (inherited)
 most are invariant/stereotyped species
specific Ex. Spider web design
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Fixed action pattern
How triggered? Specific sign stimuli
Aggression in male 3 spined stickleback
triggered by visual cue
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Fixed action pattern- Honeybee waggle dance
Provides info on direction and specific
distance to food Distance duration of
dance Directionlt in relation to vertical
surface of hive
Fig. 52.14
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Song learning
inheritance learned component since deafened
bird sings imperfectly
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Learned Behavior
must be some genetic component e.g. maze
running better with selective breeding
imprinting and critical period (timing) more
flexibility than instinct requires some
memory and capacity to modify behavior based
on past experience  there are costs e.g. time
to learn, trial and error
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Imprinting
Konrad Lorenz and imprinting geese
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Trial and error learning
Fig. 52.8
Some things cant be learned by trial and error.
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Insight Learning
 use mental processes to solve a problem
Japanese macques observed set of
behaviors--washing sand off potatoes-- learned
and transmitted to succeeding generations
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Evolutionarily important aspects of behavior
can be adapative or maladaptive
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Anthropomorphic
Animals act as ifangry
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Evolutionarily important aspects of behavior
reproductive isolating mechanisms - recognize
correct male and female species specific mating
signals -e.g. mating calls often instinctual to
insure proper recognition
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Evolutionarily important aspects of behavior
Function of organ can change redirecting
evolution -exaptation e.g. limbs fins to
feet Feathers thermoregulation to gliding/
catching insects to flight
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Sociobiology (evolution behavior)
 E.O. Wilson-1975 used concept of fitness
(frequency that an animals genes passed on to
next generation) and genetic basis of behavior
to analyze evolution and maintenance of social
behavior in animals when animals are together
by chance or as a unit?
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Altruism
 unselfish behavior (most social behaviors are
selfish they benefit the individual at the
expense of others)  decreases individual
fitness but increases fitness of pop. ex. Bee
societies- workers sterile and protect
Queen-they sting intruders helps defend hive but
results in death of individual
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Kin Selection
 higher degree of relatedness more likely
individual is to aid a relative
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Alarm Call
 female Belding gr. squirrel more likely to
give alarm call than males why?  females stay
close to birth places whereas males
disperse  females more likely to live near
close relatives and alarm calls that warn those
relatives increases fitness of caller