Animal Behaviour - Final

Parental care

Behavior by a parent that increases offspring’s fitness, which would not occur in the absence of offspring.

Modes: feeding, protection, transportation, maintenance (grooming, heat, gas exchange, defense), and teaching

Precocial young

Animals that lay eggs and never see them again, young never see parent. Learn things socially or through innate behaviours.

Signal of need hypothesis

Birds beg the most because they need it the most, get it.

Signal of quality hypothesis

Feeding the highest quality offspring based off signal or merit

K-selection

A reproductive strategy characterized by constant, predictable environments, larger individuals, longer lifespan, fewer individuals, and parental care. Intraspecific competition is intense.

r-selection

A reproductive strategy emphasizing the production of many offspring with little to no parental care in uncertain environments.

Altricial young

Offspring that are born in a relatively undeveloped state and require care from parents until they can fend for themselves.

Biparental care

Parental care that involves both parents participating in the upbringing of offspring. Many birds, some mammals, and few fish.

Uniparental care

Parental care provided by only one parent, often the mother. Many fish may only have a father.

Parental Investment Theory

Anything done by the parent for the offspring that increases the offsprings chance of surviving while decreasing the parent’s ability to invest in other offsprings. r x b > c → hamilton’s rule. Benefits are in terms of current offspring and not giving to future offspring.

Parent-offspring conflict

Clash of interest between parent and offspring. Parents gain fitness by withholding parental care/resources from offspring to invest later (another round of reproduction). This leads to sibling-rivalry (offspring-offspring conflict).

William’s principal

investment in the present comes at the cost of investment in the future. Lifetime reproductive success (LRS) depends on…

1. Present success (P): P is a function of what you are giving to your present offspring, Product of reproductive effort.

2. Future success (F): F is a function of what you have to give you future offspring (your own growth and survival). Product of somatic effort.

3. LRS = P(RE) + F(SE)

Hamilton’s rule

An equation stating that altruistic behavior will be favored by natural selection if the benefit to the recipient multiplied by the coefficient of relatedness is greater than the cost to the altruist.

Trivers-Willard Hypothesis

The hypothesis that parents of high social rank are more likely to have male offspring, as they can invest more in their success.

Siblicide

The practice in which offspring kill their siblings, usually due to resource competition.

Brood parasitism

A reproductive strategy where one species lays its eggs in the nests of another species, relying on the host to raise its young.

Inclusive fitness

The total effect an individual has on proliferating its genes by producing its own offspring and by helping relatives.

Direct fitness

The genetic contribution of an individual to the next generation through its own offspring.

Indirect fitness

The genetic contribution to the next generation through the offspring of relatives.

Optimal Foraging Theory (OFT)

A model used to predict how an animal behaves when searching for food, optimizing energy expenditure against the benefits of intake. Is it risk-averse or risk-prone.

Marginal Value Theorem (MVT)

A foraging model which states that one should stay in a food patch until the marginal benefit of foraging there equals the average rate of food intake across all patches.

Cooperative hunting

A behavior where animals work together to catch prey, increasing their survival and access to food.

Dilution effect

The phenomenon where an individual’s chance of being captured decreases as group size increases.

Camouflage

The ability of an organism to blend in with its surroundings to avoid detection by predators.

Mullerian mimicry

A form of mimicry in which two or more unpalatable species share common warning signals, benefiting all involved.

Batesian mimicry

A form of mimicry where a harmless species evolves to resemble a harmful one to avoid predation.

Sexual conflict

The differences in reproductive interests between males and females, often leading to competition and coercion.

Social learning

Learning that occurs through observing and interacting with others, as opposed to through direct experience.

Mate-choice copying

A phenomenon where an individual's preference for a mate is influenced by the choices of others, particularly same-sex individuals.

Honest signaling

The concept that signals (like displays) genuinely reflect an individual's condition or fitness, making deceit difficult.

Resource Holding Potential (RHP)

A measure of an individual's ability to win contests over resources, often based on physical attributes or experience.

Game theory

A mathematical framework to model strategic interactions where the outcomes depend on the actions of all participants.

Kin selection

A type of natural selection that favors altruistic behaviors towards relatives, enhancing their reproductive success.

Evolutionary Psychology

The study of psychological adaptations resulting from the evolutionary pressures faced by humans.

Contextual clues

Signals or information derived from environmental and social contexts that influence behavior.

Altruism

Behavior that benefits another at the cost of oneself, which can be explained through kin selection and inclusive fitness.

Eavesdropping

When one individual uses signals meant for another to gain an advantage, often at the cost of the original signaler.

Reciprocal altruism

A form of altruism where individuals provide a benefit to others with the expectation that the favor will be returned in the future.

Evolutionary arms race

The ongoing adaptive responses between competing species, leading to the evolution of increasingly effective adaptations.

Learning and communication

Processes through which animals gather information and share signals to convey messages in their social environment.

Offspring recognition

Some species have parents that can recognize offspring, while others cannot. Penguins do the identity parade. Father will eventually recognize a unique call.

Cost of sociality

Competition for food and mates (aggression in oestrous groups), energy and time of dominance interactions (aggression over good food), disease (parasitic infection), risk of brood parasitism, conspicuousness (victim of egg removal)

Benefits of sociality

Protection from physical environment and predators, territory defense, dilution effect and many eyes effect, and information (following good hunters).

Peeping

Stop what they are doing and look up/be vigilant. Does not depend on the nearest neighbour. Squirrel spends more time being vigilant if there is no group. Only do it when someone is calling if they’re in a group. More efficient.

Benefit to self via self

Mutualism (immediate) and reciprocal altruism (future).

Benefit to self via kinship

Indirect fitness. The probability that 2 individuals share an allele that they have inherited from some common, recent ancestor. Coefficient of Relatedness = ‘r’. Yourself (1.0), sibling (0.5), parent (0.5), grandparent/child (0.25).

Cooperative breeding

Sexually mature offspring may come back to help in parental nest. When helpers are removed, a lot less offspring survive. Relieving parents so they could have future offspring. Lots of habitats available. Failed to see helpers at the next island, they had their own territory. High quality started seeing helpers, medium were also seeing helpers.

Mate-choice copying

The mate choice of one individual influences the mate choice of another (same-sex) individual. Expected when cost associated with mate selection are high. Females differ in ability to choose good males. Information from other females helps you avoid interacting with a male, and just pick it if a female likes a male - they’ve already been assessed.

Self-acquired information

More reliable, costly (trial & error learning - time, energy, safety).

Socially-acquired information

Less reliable, cheap (saving time, effort, opportunity, cost)

Cultural transmission

When an individual’s phenotype changes as a result of teaching or social learning. What they learn cannot be passed on by genetic transmission. Can still be passed on through generations. Operate more quickly than genetic transmission.

Selective association

Evolution of learning is this. You can’t associate just anything - some associations are more likely to occur than others. Can’t trick rats into not drinking water by adding slight poison/sour water and a flash of light. Evolutionary history matters.

Costly neutral investment

Hippocampus has different behaviour. Males going around and finding females. Males of polygynous - bigger hippocampal body, significant with us.

Animal Communication Types

From signal to receiver depends on → contexts (how stuff is working, defense, resolution, mate attraction, social integration, “auto-communication) and modes (auditory, visual, vibrational, chemical, electrical)

Sender-necessary costs

Selection pressures. Cichlids have good red spectrum, so guppies are in the blue spectrum to avoid being eaten. They are communicating visually. Energy, conspicuousness (auditory, olfactory, visual), time lost, conflict with original function. Co-opted signal.

Handicap hypothesis - for communication to be honest, there’s costs.

Deception

Illegitimate sender. Conflict between receiver and sender. Sender cheats on receiver. Sensory exploitation. Take advantage - leads to an arms race.

Adaptationist

The mind is a set of information processing machines with decision-making mechanisms that evolved to solve adaptive problems humans have faced/face.

Evolutionary Psychology Misconceptions

Humans behave with the purpose of increasing their fitness, all human behaviour exhibited is adaptive (masturbation, adoption, excess aggression), what is “adaptive” is good.

Environment of Evolutionary adaptedness

Males and females lived in nomadic tribes, hunted, gathered, had offspring. A lot of stuff from the past explains current behaviours. Like craving fatty foods → calorie scarcity.

Young male syndrome

Young males should exhibit more “risk taking”. Young males should be the most involved in the violent crimes, homicide statistics state young males are both the biggest offends and victims. Intrasexual competition?

Intra-sex competition

Sperm competition between males. Amount of ejaculate from males at a sperm bank. What is a percentage of time spent from last time you were without your partner. More time spent apart - more sperm per ejaculate. Sperm competition. They have to risk it

Inter-sex mate choice

Sex differences in preferences and offers made to members of the opposite sex. Good looks are meant to symbolize youth and fertility. Feminized males are preferred when non-ovulating, less feminization when ovulating.

Major histocompatibility complex (MHC)

Pathogen defense, T-shirt sniffing. When females take oral contraceptives they prefer a similar scent to themselves, otherwise they prefer dissimilar MHC.

Resource holding potential

Winner of contests between rivals has higher RHP. May relate to experience.

War of attrition models

An individual is assumed to compete with another only up to a certain level, and then retreats from the contest. Neither individual knows how far the other is will or able to go. The contest simply ends when one of the contestants reaches their own maximum level of investment in the contest. Contest may be subject to bluffing or honest signaling.F

Dillution effect

An individuals chance of being captured decreases as group size increases, often because the predator takes limited number of prey on each attack. Probability of capture as a function of group size.

Confusion effect

Predators find it difficult to focus on one prey and with all moving in different directions and lots of noise. Difficult to focus on stimuli coming from one prey. Fish escaping. Percent of attacks by the predator as a result at least on prey captured.

Odd prey effect

Any prey that differs in a conspicuous way from the others in its group is more likely to draw a predator’s notice, leading to an increased chance of it being attacked and captured.