5- Behavioral Ecology Lecture Notes

Flashcards about Behavioral Ecology, Reproductive Behavior, Social Behavior, Life History Strategies, and Grime's life history classification of plants.

What is Behavioral Ecology?

The study of the ecological factors that drive behavioral adaptations

Define Ecology

The quantitative study of the interactions between organisms and their environment

Define Behavior

Change in activity of an organism in response to a stimulus

What are Adaptations?

Traits that give an organism a fitness advantage in a particular environment

What is Fitness?

An organism's ability to survive and reproduce

List the Mechanisms of Evolutionary Change

Mutation, Migration, Genetic Drift, Natural Selection

what are the reproductive behavior for animals?

• Mating systems

• Parental Investments

• Social Interactions

what are the reproductive behavior for plants?

• Mating systems

• Flowering time (phenology)

• Pollination syndromes

• Sexual selection

• Seed dispersal mechanisms

• Resource allocation

What is Intersexual selection?

Choosing a mate from the opposite sex

Define a Mating system.

The process of locating, attracting, competing, and mating with a sex partner

What is Intrasexual selection?

Competing against the same sex for a mate

What are Secondary sex characteristics?

Physical traits that are related to sex but not directly involved in reproduction

Define the four types of mate selection: Polygamy, Polyandry, Promiscuity, Monogamy.

Polygamy: one male with multiple females

Polyandry: one female with multiple males

Promiscuity: multiple females with multiple males

Monogamy: one male with one females

What factors do females typically consider when choosing a mate?

Age, Attractiveness, Body Size, Health, Mating Status

what are female reproductive success often limited by?

access to resources

what are males reproductive success often limited by?

access to mates

why are females typically exhibit stronger mate choice than males?

Females often produce fewer and bigger gametes, carry young in utero, and invest in parental care for extended times

why are males sometimes the choosy ones?

Increased parental care, limited mating opportunities, or significant variation in female quality within a population

Define Parental Investment

Any behavior that increases offspring’s chances of survival at the cost of the parent’s ability to rear future offspring.

Define Sociality

The degree to which individuals in an animal population tend to associate in social groups and form cooperative societies.

Define Altruism

Behavior that benefits others at a cost to the individual

Define Kin Selection

Altruistic behavior that is most likely to occur with close relatives

Define Direct Fitness

Offspring produced by an individual

Define Indirect Fitness

Offspring produced by a relative

Define Inclusive Fitness

The sum of direct and indirect fitness

What is Hamilton's Rule?

Organisms adapt to encourage genetic success, not individualized reproductive success

what is Hamilton’s Rule equation

r*B > C (r = Relatedness, B = Benefit, C = Cost)

why do species decide to be altruistic with their relative?

Individuals share many alleles with their relatives, helping relatives

reproduce can increasing the frequency of their own alleles in future

generations

Define Eusociality

Cooperate in caring for young, Reproductive castes (some individuals do not reproduce), Overlap of generations

What is Haplodiploidy?

One sex is haploid (one copy of each chromosome) and the other is diploid (two copies of each chromosome).

How are haploids (females) developed?

Gametes produced by mitosis and offspring by direct egg development

How are diploids (males) developed?

Gametes produced by meiosis and offspring by sexual fertilization

Define Life History Strategies

Its lifetime pattern of growth, development, and reproduction. They’re shaped by natural selection

• Investment in growth vs reproduction

• Few high investment offspring or many low investment offspring

• Sexual or asexual reproduction

• Single-sex or hermaphroditic

• Early or late onset of reproduction

Life History Trade-Offs

• Many offspring

• Less Parental care

• High Mortality

• Small Body size

• Early Onset of maturity

• Once Reproduction

• Unstable Favoured environment

r-strategist

• Few offspring

• More Parental care

• Low Mortality

• Large Body size

• Late Onset of maturity

• Multiple times Reproduction

• Stable Favoured environment

k-strategist

List Grime's life history strategies of plants

Competitive (C), Stress-tolerant (S), Ruderal (R)

What do the following classifying of plants demonstrate?

1. Competitive to ruderal

2. Ruderal to stress-tolerant

3. Stress-tolerant to competitive

1. increasing disturbance

2. increasing stress

3. increasing competition