vocab-- 3+4 and everything so fourth

Day range / home range / core area / territory

Day range is the path traveled in one day or night. Home range is the total area used over a longer period. Core area is the most intensively used part of the home range. A territory is an area actively defended from others.

Fallback food

A food that becomes especially important when preferred resources are scarce, even if it is not eaten frequently during better periods.

Positional behavior

The combination of locomotion and posture, including how a primate moves, sits, clings, stands, or hangs while traveling, feeding, or resting.

Social organization / social structure / mating system

Social organization is the demographic composition of a group; social structure is the pattern of relationships and interactions; mating system is the actual pattern of reproduction.

Behavioral state

A behavior or condition lasting for a measurable period, such as feeding, resting, traveling, or remaining near another individual.

Behavioral event

A brief, discrete action that can be approximated as a point in time, such as a vocalization, strike, or chase.

Sampling rules vs. recording rules

Sampling rules determine who or what is watched and when. Recording rules determine how the observed behavior is entered into the data.

Focal sampling

Observing one selected individual for a specified period, usually recording its behaviors and any time it is out of sight.

Scan sampling

Recording the behavioral state of every visible group member at predetermined intervals.

Ad libitum sampling

Informally recording whatever behavior attracts attention; useful for discovering rare behaviors but vulnerable to observer bias.

Instantaneous sampling

Recording an individual’s behavior only at predetermined points in time; primarily useful for behavioral states. This is a minor term for this lecture.

continuous recording

Recording every occurrence, beginning, or ending of the relevant behaviors throughout an observation period.

All-occurrence sampling

Watching the group for every occurrence of one selected behavior rather than following one particular individual.

One-zero sampling

Recording whether a behavior occurred at least once during an interval, regardless of its frequency or duration within that interval.

Ethogram

A list of clearly and operationally defined behaviors that researchers intend to identify and record.

Abiotic vs. biotic ecological data

Abiotic data measure nonliving conditions such as rain, temperature, elevation, topography, and soil. Biotic data measure living components such as trees, fruit, lianas, predators, prey, and competitors.

Line-transect sampling

A method in which an observer travels along a defined line and records organisms, distances, and sighting angles to estimate the sampled area and animal density.

Camera trap

A remotely placed camera, generally triggered by movement or body heat, that records animals without requiring an observer to remain present.

Predation rate vs. predation risk

• Predation rate is the frequency of successful attacks

• Predation risk includes the possibility of attack based on predator encounters and unsuccessful attacks.

• Risk can strongly influence behavior even when researchers rarely observe kills.

Detection, protection, and evasion

A mental model for organizing primate antipredator strategies. Detection identifies predators through vigilance or alarm calls; protection reduces the chance of capture through group living, mobbing, or associations; evasion avoids detection or dangerous places through habitat use and crypsis.

vigilance

Scanning the environment for predators rather than feeding, resting, or socializing. Vigilance therefore has an opportunity cost, and it is distributed unequally according to factors such as sex, age, rank, location, and vulnerability.

Functionally referential alarm call

• A call that reliably corresponds to a particular external threat and causes listeners to respond appropriately, such as looking upward for an eagle.

• This describes the call’s function and effect without assuming the caller intentionally names the predator.

Alarm-call manipulation

• Producing or exploiting an alarm signal for an individual advantage when no immediate danger exists—for example, causing others to abandon food.

• Whether manipulation is worthwhile depends on its benefits, costs, and the risk that receivers stop responding.

Dilution effect

• The reduction in an individual’s probability of being selected when a predator attacks a larger group.

• A ten-member group may suggest a simplified one-in-ten probability, but actual risk is unequal because members differ in position, vulnerability, and behavior.

Mobbing

• Multiple animals approaching, surrounding, threatening, or attacking a predator.

• Mobbing may drive the predator away, but participants risk injury and lose time and energy.

Mixed-species association

A temporary or lasting association between different species that can improve predator detection through shared vigilance and recognition of one another’s alarm calls. Benefits must be weighed against feeding competition and whether the species face the same predators.

Crypsis

• Traits or behaviors that reduce the probability of being detected by a predator.

• Crypsis includes background matching, disruptive patterns, countershading, reduced movement, and selection of concealing habitats.

Background matching or pattern blending

Coloration or markings that make an animal visually resemble its surroundings, reducing the chance that a predator distinguishes it from the background. Effectiveness must be evaluated through the predator’s visual system.

Gloger’s rule

The general tendency for animals in warm, humid environments to have darker pigmentation than related animals in cooler or drier environments. Darker coloration may improve background matching in shaded, densely vegetated habitats, although camouflage is not the only possible explanation.

Countershading

Coloration in which the dorsal surface is darker and the ventral surface is lighter. It can reduce the visual effect of illumination and body shadows, making a three-dimensional animal appear flatter and less detectable.

Cooperative rescue

Coordinated intervention by multiple group members to free an individual captured by a predator. It may involve costly physical attacks and can illustrate how predation favors cooperation and social relationships.

Predator deterrence vs. conspecific warning

Predator deterrence communicates to the predator that it has been detected and may discourage attack; conspecific warning provides information to group members. The same alarm call may serve both functions.

Life History

The timing and pattern of an organism’s major developmental and reproductive stages, including growth, maturation, reproduction, parental investment, aging, and death.

Fast vs. Slow life history

• A fast strategy combines early maturity, rapid reproduction, larger litters, high mortality, and a shorter life

• A slow strategy combines prolonged growth, later reproduction, fewer offspring, greater investment per offspring, lower mortality, and a longer life.

• Primates generally fall toward the slow end.

Life-history trade-off and reproductive effort

• Because energy is limited, investment in one function can reduce investment in another.

• Reproductive effort is the energy and behavior devoted to producing and supporting offspring, potentially at the expense of growth, bodily maintenance, or future survival

Allometry

• The relationship between body size and biological traits.

• Growth allometry examines how proportions change as individual grows

• Interspecific allometry compares size-related differences among species

Gestation, weaning, age at first reproduction, and interbirth interval + what all of these terms basically explain

• Gestation is the time from conception to birth.

• Weaning is the transition away from maternal milk/feeding by the mother

• Age at first reproduction marks reproductive maturity

• Interbirth interval is the time between consecutive births.

All of these terms basically explain life history

Fecundity, fertility, and reproductive value

• Fecundity is the number of individuals a female is capable of producing

• Fertility is the number actually produced

• reproductive value is an individual’s expected future reproductive potential at a particular age.

Life span vs. life expectancy

• Life span is the period from birth to death.

• Life expectancy is the mean age at death—or expected remaining life—among individuals that have survived to a specified age

Life table, survivorship, survival rate, and mortality rate

• A life table follows survival and death across age intervals.

• Survivorship is the probability at birth of reaching age x

• Survival rate is the proportion alive at age x that reach x + 1

• Mortality rate is the proportion that die before x + 1.

Aging, reproductive senescence, and postreproductive life span

• Aging is age-dependent physical deterioration and increasing mortality risk

• Reproductive senescence is declining fertility with age

• Postreproductive life span is the period lived after reproduction has ended

Expensive-tissue hypothesis

The hypothesis that maintaining a metabolically expensive large brain requires an energetic trade-off

• such as reducing investment in the gut or another costly tissue rather than simply increasing total energy expenditure.

Antagonistic pleiotropy

A gene or trait can improve survival or reproduction early in life but produce harmful effects later, when natural selection is weaker.

Disposable-soma hypothesis

Because energy is limited, organisms cannot maximize reproduction and bodily repair simultaneously

• Greater reproductive investment may leave fewer resources for cellular maintenance, contributing to aging.

Evolutionary fitness

An individual’s genetic contribution to future generations through successful reproduction and the survival and reproduction of descendants.

Inclusive fitness

Genetic success gained through both one’s own reproduction and assistance that helps genetic relatives survive and reproduce.

Menopause

• The permanent, natural cessation of ovulation at a later stage of life;

• it is more specific than the general condition of infertility.

Postreproductive lifespan

The portion of an individual’s life after reproduction has permanently ended.

Grandmother Hypothesis

• The proposal that older females can increase inclusive fitness by helping daughters, nieces, or grandchildren survive and reproduce rather than continuing to reproduce themselves.

Mother Hypothesis

• The proposal that stopping risky late-life reproduction can protect a mother and allow her to invest in her already-existing dependent children.

Reproductive Conflict Hypothesis

• The proposal is that older females stop reproducing to reduce costly competition with younger females while potentially gaining inclusive-fitness benefits from the younger generation’s reproduction.

Dispersal

• Movement away from one’s natal or current social group

• Dispersal changes the pattern of relatedness within a group and therefore affects the potential benefits of helping others.

Nonadaptive trait

• A characteristic that was not favored because it increased fitness and may instead appear because of changed conditions, biological constraints, or insufficient time for natural selection to shape it.

Jarman-Bell principle

The principle that large animals have greater total nutrient requirements but lower requirements per unit body mass, allowing them to use abundant lower-quality foods, whereas small animals require rarer, higher-quality foods.

Metabolism

All chemical reactions occurring within the body, including the biochemical modification of compounds in organisms and cells.

Basal metabolic rate (BMR)

An organism’s resting energy expenditure for maintaining basic functions. Larger animals have higher absolute costs, but smaller animals generally have higher costs per unit body mass.

Food quality

• The concentration and accessibility of energy and protein in food.

• High-quality foods are nutrient-rich and readily digested

• Low-quality foods contain fewer accessible nutrients or require more processing

Frugivory

Reliance on fruit, a high-quality but usually patchy and competitive food source.

Folivory

Reliance on leaves, an abundant but relatively low-quality food source that requires substantial mechanical and microbial processing.

Insectivory

Reliance on insects, an energy-rich form of animal prey commonly important to small primates with high relative metabolic requirements.

Gumnivory

Reliance on plant gums or exudates, commonly involving bark-gouging teeth and microbial fermentation.

Granivory

Reliance on grains or seeds.

Faunivory

Consumption of animal prey, including insects and vertebrates; insectivory is one form of faunivory.

Trophic level

A feeding position in an ecological energy chain, such as producer, herbivore, or carnivore.

Omnivory

Feeding from more than one trophic level by consuming both plant and animal foods.

Microbiome

A community of microscopic organisms within a particular environment.

Microbiota

The microorganisms themselves within a particular environment, such as the gut.

Community assembly

The processes determining which organisms enter, establish, persist, and interact within a community.

Priority effect

The influence of early-arriving organisms on which later organisms can colonize and on the community’s developmental trajectory.

Hygiene hypothesis

The hypothesis that reduced childhood exposure to infections in highly sanitized settings contributes to increased allergic and inflammatory diseases.

Old Friends hypothesis

The hypothesis that reduced early exposure to microorganisms that historically trained immune regulation contributes to allergies, autoimmune diseases, and other inflammatory disorders.

Gut-brain axis

The bidirectional communication system connecting the gut microbiota with the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems.

Short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs)

Microbial fermentation products, including acetate, butyrate, and propionate, that can provide host energy and influence gut, immune, and neural functions.

16S rRNA sequencing

A method that uses informative regions of the bacterial 16S ribosomal RNA gene to identify and compare bacterial taxa.

Alpha diversity

Microbial diversity within a single sample, including taxon richness and evenness.

Beta diversity

The degree of difference in microbial composition between samples; similar communities have low beta diversity, while dissimilar communities have high beta diversity.

Phylosymbiosis

A pattern in which similarities among host-associated microbial communities parallel the evolutionary relationships among their hosts; the pattern alone does not prove coevolution.

Coevolution

Reciprocal evolutionary change in interacting lineages, requiring evidence that each lineage affects the other’s fitness and evolution.

DNA

Molecules that stores genetic information.

RNA

Molecule that carries or uses genetic instructions.

Gene

Section of DNA that codes for a functional product.

Allele

Different version of a gene or genetic sequence.

Genome

The complete set of an organism’s DNA, including genes and noncoding regions.

Genotype

The allele or combination of alleles an individual carries at one or more loci; more broadly, its genetic constitution.

Phenotype

An observable or measurable trait produced through the combined effects of genotype, environment, development, and their interactions.

Gene expression

The process and degree by which information in a gene is used to produce RNA and, for protein-coding genes, protein.

Gene–environment interaction (G×E)

A situation in which the phenotypic effect of a genotype differs depending on the environment.

Epigenetics

Lasting or inherited changes in gene activity without changing the DNA sequence.

Heritability

The proportion of differences in a trait within a population that can be explained by genetic differences.

Polymorphism

A genetic variant with two or more forms present in a population.

Single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)

Variation at a single DNA nucleotide position among individuals.

Genetic marker

A variable DNA region used to track individuals, relatives, populations, inheritance, or evolutionary relationships.

Microsatellite

A short, tandemly repeated DNA motif whose repeat number is often highly variable, making it useful for individual identification, paternity, and kinship.

Locus

A specific position or region in the genome.

Polygenic trait

A trait influenced by variation at many genetic loci, usually with each locus contributing a small effect.

Coding variation

Genetic variation within a protein-coding sequence that can alter the amino-acid sequence or production of the encoded protein.

Regulatory variation

Copy-number variation (CNV)

A difference among individuals or species in how many copies of a DNA segment or gene are present.

Noninvasive genetic sampling

Collecting DNA from material such as feces, shed hair, food wadges, or environmental traces without capturing or injuring the animal.

Molecular census

An estimate of the number and identity of animals in an area based on unique DNA profiles rather than sightings or indirect signs alone.