Animal Behavior exam 1

How do harvestman spiders escape predation?

it remains motionless and escapes detection as prey by foraging ants

How do ants recruit more worker ants to swarm prey?

there is a pheromone deposited by foragers that have discovered a food item

In the lion infanticide video, why did the male lions kill the cubs

to force the female into a mating cycle

what is the scientific method?

form of study involving observation, measurement, experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypothesis

what is ethology

the scientific study of the behavior of organisms, focused on behavior in natural conditions

can a hypothesis be proven?

no, you can not prove a hypothesis. You can only support it or refute it

what is a proximate analysis?

gets the immediate cause of the behavior

what is the ultimate analysis?

gets the evolutionary basis for the behavior

what are Tinbergen’s four types of questions?

mechanistic, developmental, evolutionary/phylogenetic, survival value

what are the three mechanisms that can influence animal behavior?

evolution, learning, and cultural transmission

what is learning?

individual learning alters the behavior of a single animal over hours, days, lifetime

what is cultural transmission?

newly learned behaviors are transferred to others within a population by social learning, can persist for generations

The teleogryllus oceanicus in the hawaiian islands were predated on by parasites. How did evolution combat this?

The parasite would go after their buzzer that they would vibrate to attract a mate. They evolved so that they didn’t have it but still went to the site of the noise to mate.

How did locusts learn when choosing the nutritionally balanced/ nutritionally deficient food?

The locusts that had their food in a random spot were not able to grow as well as the other locusts in the learning spot. This produced better learning on what to forage.

How do rats use cultural transmission to decide what is good to eat and what is bad?

When a rat eats it has an odor gland that gives off the scent of what it ate. When other rats smells this scent, they know it is a good thing to eat and can decide what to eat and not to eat.

what is an empirical approach?

first gather data and draw conclusions, then generate new, testable predictions

Ex: relationship between foraging behavior and predation pressure (do prey decrease foraging when a predator is around?)

what is a conceptual approach?

starting from a broad concept to understand behavior

Ex: concept of kin selection leads to many testable predictions about how animals should behave towards kin and non-kin

what is a theoretical approach?

generating a mathematical model of behavior

Ex: optimal foraging theory to determine which prey items should be taken by a predator

what happened with the wild siberian silver foxes in russia

only the tamest foxes were selected for breeding and they became more dog like. they lost their perky ears.

what is an allele?

gene variant, one or two or more alternative forms of a gene

is artificial selection faster than natural selection?

yes

what is heritability?

a measure of the proportion of variance in a trait that is due to genetic influence, rather than environmental

what was the cross-fostering experiment?

nestlings were taken from small colonies and fostered in large colonies. They grew up and still preferred small colonies.

what was the selection truncation experiment?

took ravens and measured their response time to an object. Only ravens that had a score of 80 were allowed to breed. The mean was less than 80 so the trait was not heritable

what can proximate analyses focus on

hormones, neurons, genes, and development

where do hormones travel to and from?

they travel from endocrine cells to target cells

what are peptide hormones?

hormones consisting of a short sequence of amino acids

what are steroid hormones

small molecules that are not made of amino acids and are instead made of lipids

in the rat ovaries were the males who were around females or the males around more of the males grow up to have more testosterone?

males next to males

what did adding more juvenile hormone do to the bees?

made them forage (late life cycle only) early

What are 3 characteristics of eusociality?

reproductive division of labor
overlapping generations
cooperative care of young

what is kin selection?

helping relatives allows an individual to pass some of its own genes to the next generation

what is homology?

a trait shared by two (or more) species because of common ancestry

what is homoplasy?

a trait that is shared by two or more species, but is not a result of common ancestry

what is the principle of parsimony?

the simplest explanation is the most likely explanation

what are glia?

cells found in the nervous system that provide physical support to neurons but do not send electrical impulses

what are some neurotransmitters in vertebrates?

dopamine, serotonin, and acetylcholine

what are effectors?

final target for nervous impulses that causes a behavioral response

what is neural plasticity?

the ability of brains and neural pathways to change in response to experience

explain the experiment with the foraging bees and nursing bees to measure age vs experience

bees were taken and put into roles of foraging and nursing. This was to measure does age or experience matter more in development of the mushroom body part of the brain. 7 day old foragers had a bigger volume than 8 day old nurses