Animal Behavior Exam 3

Lectures 15-20

Benefits of Group Living:

• Improved foraging efficiency,

• resource defense,

• more efficient locomotion,

• reduced predation risk.

Costs of group living:

• Increased competition for food,

• reproductive interference,

• opportunity costs,

• increased risk of disease,

• greater conspicuousness.

Linear hierarchies

Individuals dominant to those below in ranking and subordinate to those above in ranking.

Kin selection

a form of selection in which animals help relatives reproduce at a potential cost to their own reproduction.

Reciprocity

when one organism provides benefit to another, unrelated individual with the expectation of future reciprocation.

Direct reciprocity

Individuals repay acts of cooperation to those who helped them, based on repeated interactions.

Indirect reciprocity

Individuals help others based on reputation, rather than direct payback.

Umwelt

Environment or sensory world

Rods

Sensitive to light (low-level vision)

Cones

Involved in color vision

Communication

the provision of information by a sender to a receiver through the environment.

Signal

An act or structure that alters the behavior of other organisms.

Different communication within-species social integration:

1. recognition systems

2. mating

3. parenting

4. group living

Recognition

discrimination and identification of a target individual or group against a collection of non-target individuals.

The functions of signals during mating

1. species recognition

2. mate quality assessment

3. pair cooperation

The functions of signals during parental care

1. providing care to your own offspring

2. signaling levels of “need”

3. directive signals

The functions of signals in group living

1. group-mate recognition

2. appeasement signals

3. group coordination and movement