Transcript Quick Tour Through Animal Behavior

Quick Tour Through Animal
Behavior
The transition
• Realize that animal behaviors are responses
made by organisms…responses to stimuli
detected by nerves.
• And those responses are the result of
signaling cascades.
• 
Behavior
• Individually: An action carried out by muscles
or glands under the control of the nervous
system in response to a stimulus
• Collectively: sum of an animal’s responses to
external and internal stimuli
AP Standard
• Organisms respond to changes in the
environment through behavioral and
physiological mechanisms.
Responses
physiological
• Shivering
• Sweating
behavioral
• Hibernation
• Migration
• Aestivation
• Nocturnal vs diurnal –
circadian rhythms
• Taxis
• Kinesis
Earthworms
• segmented nervous system
• brain is located above the pharynx and is
connected to the first ventral ganglion
lab
• What kinds of receptors does a worm have (ie
– to what kinds of stimuli does it respond)?
• Can a worm respond to an “isolated”
stimulus?
• Each segmented ganglion gets sensory
information from only a local region and
controls muscles only in this local region
• Earthworms have touch, light, vibration and
chemical receptors all along the entire body
surface.
Chapter 43
– Behavior: any action that can be observed and
described
• Stimulus vs response
• Innate vs learned
– Behavioral ecology: studies how behavior is
controlled, how it develops, evolves, and
contributes to survival and reproductive success.
AP Standard:
• Natural selection favors behaviors that
increase survival and reproductive fitness.
Innate behavior
•
•
•
•
What you are born knowing how to do
developmentally fixed
under strong genetic control
Exhibited in the same form in a population despite
external and internal environmental differences
Examples:
• Kinesis: change in activity in response to a
stimulus
• Taxis: automatic, oriented movement toward
or away from some stimulus
Tinbergen: Fixed Action Patterns
• Sign Stimulus – external cue
• Triggers sequence of unlearned acts
reflexes
How would innate behaviors
increase fitness?
• Some things you
just have to get
right on the first
try…
AP Standard
• Internal and external signals regulate a variety
of physiological responses that synchronize
with environmental cycles and cues.
Circadian Clock
• Internal mechanism that maintains a 24-hour
activity rhythm or cycle
– How do they “know” what time it is?
External Signals
•
•
•
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Temperature
Day length
Position relative to the sun
Moon phases
Migration
• Regular, long distance change in location
• Why
• When: Timing
– Innately controlled
• How?
Migration: how
– Sun’s position
– Landmarks
– Stars
– Magnetic fields
• The “where” seems to be learned
Impacts on Migration…
• Humans are impacting the migration of
organisms…
– Pick an organism
– Discuss this organism’s normal migration patterns
– Discuss the human impact(s) to the migration
route
– What can be done about it? Alternate solutions?
• http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/03/31
/migration-and-threats
AP Standard
• Individuals can act on information and
communicate it to others.
– What is communication?
– Reliability of signal
– Recipient
– Mode
AP standard
• Living systems have a variety of signal
behaviors or cues that produce changes in the
behavior of other organisms and can result in
differential reproductive success
Visual
• Crab courtship behavior
•
•
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCn6g3pXc1s&ebc=ANyPxKovCynUTGjKyuhzUXy5fW5eizzjKgiU6Lyh8AC2IOj_Yf5tg7sHQiHJDgnTlBwv3wOWzAo7eohG-1sUklqitw_Yus22Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwet0JLuqWY
Electrical
• Animal Minds Video Clip: Sharks
Tactile
• Location of food sources
– Round dance
– Waggle dance
–
–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFDGPgXtKU&ebc=ANyPxKr5X1fls1I0yueqdc2LWzjqVwq9YPV5KWj8GyPCZxMitcRsOgqfPG8CXrtsO2Twp5p2YU3cB0mVfwd5z73ZD2cTvtv_g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ijI-g4jHg
Tactile continued
• Grooming
• Triggers release of endorphins and oxytocin
• Social bonding – esp important in cooperative
situations
•
•
https://www.mpg.de/6858847/oxytocin-social-grooming
http://knowingneurons.com/2013/02/20/social-grooming-its-not-just-for-monkeys-and-prairie-voles/
Chemical
Auditory
Improvement with performance
• Instinct to alarm call
• Learn difference
between genuine
predators and
innocuous neighbors
• Different alarm calls
used for different
predators
• Social confirmation
learning
• Behavioral change resulting from
experience/interactions with environment and
other organisms
• Durable changes
• Examples:
–
–
–
–
Habituation
Spatial learning
Conditioning
Trial and error
Habituation
• Learn not to
respond to a
situation if the
response has
neither positive nor
negative
consequences – or
to stimuli that
carry little to no
info
Spatial Learning
• Acquiring a mental
map of a region by
inspecting the
environment
• “cognitive maps”
• Landmarks
Classical Conditioning
• Associate an
automatic,
unconditioned
response with a
novel stimulus that
does not normally
trigger the
response
• Arbitrary stimulus
=
reward/punishment
Trial and Error Learning
• Associates voluntary
activity with its
consequences
• Strengthening of
stimulus-response
connections
Back to the standard…
• Organisms are going to behave in ways that
are favored by natural selection
– Benefits MUST outweigh the costs
– Sometimes its not so obvious…
AP standard
• Cooperative behavior tends to increase the
fitness of the individual and the survival of the
population.
– Benefits must outweigh costs
Herds, flocks, and schools
• What’s the benefit?
Swarming Behavior
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/adaptations/Sw
arm
• http://io9.com/this-video-of-a-honeybeeswarm-reveals-why-humans-cant-1522411422
– This article highlights bee social structure
Pack Behavior
• http://www.discovery.com/tvshows/life/videos/cheetahs-hunt-ostrich/
– Benefits?
Predator Warning
• http://www.animalplanet.com/tv-shows/wildkingdom/videos/prairie-dogs-sound-thealarm/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcB5kySU
xWA
– Benefits?
Take a prairie dog for example…
• Prairie dogs live in colonies (called towns)
• When a predator is sighted, a prairie dog will
stand on top of its mound and start vocalizing
(give an alarm call)
• Essentially, alerting the predator to its
presence and exact location.
• Why would an individual do this? This
behavior seems counterintuitive…
Behavioral Ecologists design
experiments to test hypotheses
• http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/pr
airiedog_alarm
• So why do they do it?
• How does it increase the fitness of the
individual?
• Sacrificing yourself “for the good of the group”
(altruism) does not work as an explanation
unless there are genetic relationships…and
strong ones at that…
AP standard
• Living systems have a variety of signal
behaviors or cues that produce changes in the
behavior of other organisms and can result in
differential reproductive success
Example: territorial marking
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ebTTQo
AmDU
• Lions mark territory with scent and
vocalizations
• Interspecific (with hyenas and leopards) and
intraspecific (with neighboring lion prides)
competition deterred
What is this elephant saying?
• How does this behavior improve the success
of this elephant?
AP Standard
• Animals use visual, audible, tactile, electrical
and chemical signals to indicate dominance,
find food, establish territory and ensure
reproductive success.
examples
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•
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Bee dances (tactile – for finding food)
Fireflies (visual – for mating)
Bird songs (territory and mating)
Territorial marking (scents and vocals)
Pack behavior (dominance vs submissive displays)
Rutting season (competition/sexual selection)
– Animal Minds Video: we watched in class 3/3
– http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/inside-animalminds.html
AP Standard
• Organism activities are affected by
interactions with biotic and abiotic factors.
• Cooperative behavior within or between
populations contributes to the survival of the
populations.
Niche and Resource Partitioning