Animal Behavior Final

What are the two factors help us understand mating systems?

The first factor is sexual conflict, which is differential selection on males and females to maximize their fitness. Female fitness is most often limited by access to resources, while male fitness is most often limited by the number of mates. The second factor is resources and distribution vary in different environments.

Explain the two hypotheses that explain the evolution of male aggregation into leks

Hotspot hypothesis is when males can benefit by aggregating on leks near a location in the enviroment where they are likely to encounter females. The hotshot hypothesis is when males can benefit by aggregating on leks near high-quality males that attract females. 

What is the Parent-offspring conflict theory, as well as parental invesment?

The Parent-offspring conflect theory is when parents should maximize their lifetime reproductive success, and offspring shoudl maximize the energy and protection they recieve from parents to survive to reproductive age. Parental involment is any investment by parents in an offspring that increases offspring survival at the cost of the parent's ability to invest in other offspring.

Explain the results and conclusions for the preditation risk and parental care in songbirds experiment and the theory it covers

Parent-Offspring Conflict Theory was the theory used, which is when parents should maximize their lifetime reproductive fitness, while offspring should maximize the energy and protection they currently receive from their parents in order to survive to reproductive age. The results were that egg mortality was negatively correlated with male attendance and male attendance was positively correlated with egg mass clutch size. The conclusions were that males with small clutches may be searching for additional mating opportunities

What are the two different familarizations on how to identify kin.

Direct familiarization is when individuals learn to discriminate kin from non-kin via previous associations and Indirect familiarization is when individuals learn a reference phenotypic cue from themselves or a known close relative. They then assess the degree of similarity of the learned cue to the cue in others. 

What are the Three R's in standard animal research guidlines?

Replacement encourages the use of computer modeling, videotapes, or other approaches in place of actual research on animals in the laboratory. Reduction promotes limiting the number of animals subject to disturbance in research or teaching. Refinement involves improving procedures and techniques to minimize pain and stress for animals.

What are the differences between sexual and natural selection?

Sexual selection includes acts of heritable traits that affect reproduction and morphological differences between the sexes. Natural selection is the process of differential reproduction and survivorship among individuals within a population, and traits must be heritable. 

What are the three different signals that travel most efficiently through the environment? What are their drawbacks, and describe them.

Chemical signals, which are long-lasting and can travel great distances, but cannot be modified or transmitted. Visual signals that can move rapidly through the environment, but require adequate light levels and can be blocked by objects. The final one is an auditory signal, which can be described as signals that can travel around objects and can be turned on and off quickly, but attenuate, or diminish, as they travel through the environment.

What does the optimal foraging theory assume?

Natural selection has favored feeding behaviors that maximize fitness, and fitness while feeding increases with energy intake rate. Optimal behavior is the behavior that maximizes fitness.

How do breeding habitats differ in quality with respect to reproductive success, and what is the pattern?

Animals experiencing low reproductive success exhibit breeding dispersal, so moving from one breeding site to another, while animals experiencing high reproductive success should exhibit site fidelity, so remaining at or returning to a previous location to breed. The pattern shown is that many animals exhibit site fidelity after a reproductive success and exhibit breeding dispersal after a reproductive failure, also known as a win-stay lose-shift pattern

What are the five assumptions of the Ideal Free Distribution Model and its two predictions?

1. Individuals attempt to maximize fitness, 2. habitat locations differ in resources, 3. fitness decreases when density increase 4. individuals are equal competitors, and 5. Individuals are free to move at no cost. The predictions are 1. individuals will settle in habitats based on the relative fitness payoffs: the number of individuals in each habitat will be proportional to habitat quality, and 2. all individuals will have the same fitness no matter where they settle. 

In the experiment to do with snapping shrimp, what did the territory cooperation experiment allow?

Allowed single females and paired females to guard burrow from intruder.

Females should mate polygynously only when the benefits of doing so exceed the costs. Name the 2 benefits listed in the chapter.

extra resources and sharing resources with other females.

What does the life history theory propose?

Life history theory proposes that natural selection will favor the evolution of traits that maximize an individuals lifetime reproductive success.

Explain sexual conflict.

Each sex has different benefits and coats of providing care.

Explain direct familiarization.

Individuals learn to discriminate kin from non-kin via previous associations

What is a innate behavior and give an example.

Answer: An innate behavior is a behavior that is an instinct to an animal. They are born with this and they do not have to learn it. An example of this is how a baby sea turtle will hatch out of its egg and then crawl to the ocean.

What is animal behavior?

Answer: Animal behavior is a reaction from internally and shown externally from animals responding to certain things that happen around them.

What is the difference between a signal and a cue?

Answer: A signal is something that has evolved into the certain behavior, and a cue is something that happens all the time in the environment that can guide behavior on accident. 

What is an alarm call?

Answer: Alarm calls are callouts from animals (for instance meercats) warning the group about a nearby predator coming into the area. This is used to keep all of the family safe and away from the dangerous animal

Distinguish between a home range and a territory.

Answer: A home range is a place that the animal uses for its daily activities and that it doesn't defend. While the territory is a place that the animal will defend to guard because that is all its own space and no ones else's.

Explain what the winner effect is.

Answer: The winner effect is when an animal wins a fight, they are more likely to win the next fight and become more confident because they won the previous one.

Define what the Territory Cooperation Experiment and Mate Guarding Experiment are that were used on shrimp and what were the results of each?

Territory Cooperation Experiment: Allowed single females and paired females to guard burrow from intruder. The results showed that females paired with males were more successful in burrow defense than solitary females. 

Mate Guarding Experiment: Allowed males to chose females either close to sexual receptivity (high-value) or not close to sexual receptivity (low-value). The results showed that males chose to guard high-value females more often than low-value females. 

What are the two hypotheses that explain the evolution of male aggregation into leks?

1. Hotspot hypothesis: males can benefit by aggregating on leks near a location in the environment where they are likely to encounter females

2. Hotshot hypothesis: males can benefit by aggregating on leks near high-quality males that attract females.

What is the difference between parent-offspring conflict theory and parental investment?

Parental offspring conflict theory: Parents should maximize their lifetime reproductive success and offspring should maximize the energy and protection they receive from parents to survive to reproductive age

Parental investment: Any investment by parents in an offspring that increases the offsprings survival at the cost of the parent's ability to invest in other offspring

Helping behavior should occur when?

Most common between close relatives and less common between distant relatives. It is rare between unrelated individuals. 

What are the two hypotheses that explain how individuals identify kin?

1. Direct familiarization: individuals learn to discriminate kin from non-kin via previous associations

2. Indirect familiarization: individuals learn a reference phenotypic cue from themselves or a known close relative. They then assess the degree of similarity of the learned cue to the cue in others. 

What is the difference between closed-ended learners and open-ended learners, and what is an example of a species that matches with each learn type?

Closed-ended learners have to learn their behaviors at a certain or "critical" time in their lives. An example of a closed-ended learner is a sparrow.

Open-ended learners can add and learn new behaviors throughout their lifetime. An example of an open-ended learner is a parrot

What is a innate behavior and give an example.

An innate behavior is genetically determined, it is unlearned, and the animal just does it. An example of this would be when a sea turtle hatches, it digs out of the sand and goes to the ocean. 

What is aposematic coloration and what is an example of an animal that has it?

Aposematic coloration is a brightly colored morphology in animals that allows them to stand out from their environment. It is usually associated with poisons or chemicals that make them untouchable or dangerous prey. An example is a poison dart frog. 

Define habituation and give an example.

Habituation is when an animal has a reduction or lack of response to a stimuli. An example is fiddler crabs. There was a study that used a "dummy" predator and rolled it over their habitat. Each time the dummy predator was rolled over their burrows they recorded how many crabs went towards or into their burrows. Over time the fiddler crabs stopped responding to the dummy predator. 

What is the difference between pursuit-deterrence hypothesis and alarm signal hypothesis?

Pursuit-deterrence hypothesis: this is an advertisement to a predator that their element of surprise is gone and that the pursuit is not going to be successful

Alarm Signal hypothesis: this is an advertisement to a conspecific that a predator is nearby

Mating systems can be understood by examining what two factors, explain both?

A: Sexual conflict is the differential selection on males and females to maximize their fitness (female fitness is most often limited by access to resources, male fitness is most often limited by the number of mates) Resource amount and distribution vary in different environments

What is the life history theory?

A: proposes that natural selection will favor the evolution of traits that maximize an individual's lifetime reproductive success. 

For sociality to evolve, benefits to an individual must exceed the cost. Give 4 examples for both benefits and cost.

A: Benefits include decreased time to find food, enhanced foraging success, enhanced resource defense, decreased predation risk, reduced costs of thermoregulation, specialization and division of labor, communal care of young, more rapid learning, reduced cost of movement. Costs include increased aggression, increased competition, increased attraction to predators, increased disease transmission, increased infanticide, and increased cannibalism.

What is the inclusive fitness theory?

A: explains the evolution of cooperation among related individuals

What is the difference between closed-ended learners and open-ended learners, and what is an example of a species that matches with each learning type?

A: Closed ended learners - learn from a specific "critical" time in individuals lifetime (sparrow)

Open ended learners - learn new and add new behaviors as they live through their lifetime (parrots)

What are the three R's, and what do they each mean?

A: replacement - finding a non animal subject such as a computer model

reduction - limiting number of subjects used in research or teachings

refinement - is improving mechanisms and techniques to reduce the pain, stress, etc to the subject. 

What is the difference between a signal and a cue?

A: Signal: A trait that evolved to alter the behavior of an animal receiving it (firefly flashing light). Cue: consistent aspect of the environment that guides behavior (Vultures over a carcass).

What is the optimal patch-use model, and what are the costs when leaving a food patch?

A: optimal patch-use model predicts how long an animal should exploit a food patch. Costs are energetic costs, predicatory risk, and missed opportunities.

Explain the hawk-dove model.

It examines the behavior of two individuals engaged in a contest over a resource. assumes two strategies 1. the hawk will fight until victory to injury or 2. The dove never fights but uses low-cost displays. It can explain the variation in fighting behavior among individuals and within individuals over time. It also predicts an evolutionary stable strategy by assuming both hawks and doves exist in a population with equal fitness. 

What is the difference between pursuit-deterrence hypothesis and alarm signal hypothesis?

A: pursuit-deterrence hypothesis is the advertisement behavior that informs a predator that has lost the element of surprise. (not likely to be successful) The alarm-signal hypothesis is the advertisement behavior that warns conspecifics of a nearby predator.

How do resource defense polygyny and female defense polygyny differ? 

In resource defense polygyny, males defend high-quality territories or resources that attract females. In female defense polygyny, males directly defend groups of females rather than territories. 

What is a life-history trade-off, and how does it relate to parental care?

A life-history trade-off occurs when limited energy forces an organism to allocate resources between self-maintenance and reproduction. Species that invest heavily in parental care tend to have fewer, larger offspring, while species with minimal care produce many small offspring. 

How does life history theory explain why some fish species produce larger eggs and provide more parental care? 

Life history theory predicts that species with larger body size, later maturation, and fewer reproductive events invest more energy per offspring. These species tend to produce larger eggs and provide longer parental care to maximize offspring survival. 

What is the haplodiploid genetic system?

Haploid males develop from unfertilized eggs and Diploid females develop from fertilized eggs . 

What are the two main mechanisms of kin discrimination?  

Direct familiarization: Learning kin through prior association (example: sticklebacks recognize familiar kin shoalmates). 

Indirect familiarization: Using phenotypic cues, such as odors or chemical profiles, to identify kin (example: cockroaches use cuticular hydrocarbons). 

Explain what a sister species is and give 2 examples. 

A sister species is a species that is more genetically related than any other species. An example of this would be the willow flycatcher and alder flycatcher. Another example would be the gray tree frog and the Cope's gray tree frog 

What is a fixed action pattern?

A fixed action pattern is a behavioral pattern that is influenced by genetics, and once an animal starts doing a behavior, they can't stop 

What is an alarm call?

A unique vocalization that lets an animal know a predator is nearby. 

What are two advantages and disadvantages of using chemical signaling? 

Two advantages of using chemical signaling is that they are long lasting and travel long distances. Two disadvantages are they can't be altered once sent and travel very slowly.

Long distance migrants face two issues, what are they and explain? 

The two issues long-distance migrants face are orientation and navigation. Orientation is the determination and maintenance of a direction. Navigation is determining a specific location and moving in that direction.  

Explain what the winner effect is

The winner effect occurs when an animal wins a fight, making it more likely to win the next one. For example, if a coyote wins a fight against another coyote, the next time they get into a fight, they are more confident that they are going to win, even if the coyote they are fighting is bigger. This confidence allows them to often beat the bigger coyote. 

What is the purpose of leks?

Leks are when male dominance polygyny occurs in a population and males group together and display in one location in order to attract more females. This has evolved when it is too costly for males to defend resources or females.

In what species does polyandry occur?

Polyandry occurs in sex role-reversed species where females are aggressive, have enhanced secondary characteristics, and compete for males that heavily invest in parental care. Polyandry might be favored when offspring predation is high or in resource-poor environments. 

What does the parent-offspring conflict theory state?

The parent-offspring theory states that parents wish to maximize their lifetime reproductive success, so they want their offspring to move out/away as soon as possible so that they can raise more offspring. This theory states that offspring want to maximize the energy and protection that they receive from their parents so that they survive to a reproductive age. This means they want to stay with their parents until they are/are almost to reproductive age.

Explain interspecific brood parasitism and name a species that does it.

Interspecific brood parasitism is when a female of one species lays her eggs in the nest of another species' female, who serves as the host. The host theoretically then raises the offspring as their own, although some species reject parasitic eggs. An example of this is brown-headed cowbirds, who are brood parasites.

What are the two ways kin identify kin?

Animals use direct and indirect familiarization to identify kin. Direct familiarization is when they learn to discriminate from non-kin via previous interactions with those individuals. Indirect familiarization is when they learn a reference phenotypic cue/characteristic from themselves or from known kin and then assess the degree of similarity of the learned cue to that same cue in others. In mammals, this phenotypic cue is scent, and it helps prevent inbreeding.

Name two of the four mechanisms animals can use to get information about their environment.

Animals can use chemoreception, photoreception, mechanoreception, electric field reception, and/or magnetic field reception to get information about their environment.

What is game theory?

Game theory is the idea that repeated interactions between individuals influence their behavior in those interactions. The outcome for each individual depends not only on their choice, but on the choice of the other individual.

What is the difference between phenotype and genotype?

Genotype is the genetic makeup of an organism, while a phenotype is what is expressed, or seen. Phenotype is created from the genotype, the environment, and the interactions between the two.

2 main types of polygyny, and explain what they are?

female defense and Resource defense.

Female defense is common in horses; males monopolize aggregations of females directly 

And resource defense is common in sea lions, where males defend territories rich in resources

Define sexual conflict

each sex has different benefits and costs of providing care 

What is Brood Parasitism, and what are the benefits and costs?

species go and find another egg next and then leave with host parents 

Benefits: you don't have a lot of history to remove an egg from the nest 

costs: parental care, non-parasites, pure parasites, and mixed strategy 

What do Eusocial Species exhibit?

cooperative care of the young, reproductive division of labor, and overlapping generations

Two hypotheses on how individuals identify Kin?

Direct familiarization and indirect familiarization.

What is the definition of learning 

Learning is how animals modify their behavior and adapt to their environment 

What is the Selfish Herd Hypothesis? List an example.

The Selfish Herd Hypothesis is when a group of herd animals tries to fight for the middle and kick everyone else out on the outside, so the ones on the outside are more at risk of a predator getting them. An example of this would be zebras trying to fight to be in the middle so no predator could attack them. 

What is an innate behavior, and give an example.

An innate behavior is a genetically determined, unlearned action or response. An example of this would be a hatched turtle digging itself out of the sand to reach the ocean after hatching. 

What is the criteria associated with teaching, and give an example?

The teacher modifies behavior only in the presence of pupil 2. The behavior is costly to the teacher 3. The pupil acquired knowledge or skill more rapidly due to the behavior of the teacher (Ex, chicks learn their diet from their mother's food calls)

What is the optimal patch-use model, and what are the costs when using a food patch?

It predicts how long a forager should exploit a food patch. The costs include energetic costs, predation risk, and missed opportunity costs.

What is inbreeding avoidance, and give an example.

It is the natal dispersal behavior that minimize the likelihood of nonbreeding. An example would be in Great Tits, individuals that mated with a close relative had dispersed shortest from the natal site. So dispersal behavior can influence the likelihood of inbreeding.

Give one example of how an animal can deter a predator? Give an example.

Predator harassment - A rapid movement around a predator that may be coupled with loud vocalizations or other . Ground squirrels increase blood flow to the tail, which results in slowing the snake attack. 

Define the 5 different mating systems, and give an example of each.

Monogamy - 1 female and 1 male (beavers)

polygyny - more than 1 female/ 1 male (gorillas)

polyandry - 1 female/ multiple males (pipefish)

polygynandry - more than 1 female and male, but is within a social group (lions)

promiscuity - more than 1 female and male, and isn't restricted to a specific social group (Red squirrels)

Define the Polygyny Threshold Model.

Where the females should mate polygynously only when the benefits of doing so (extra resources) exceed the costs (sharing resources with other females) 

Explain the Parent-offspring conflict theory.

parents should maximize their lifetime reproductive success while offspring should maximize the energy and protection they receive from parents. 

What is the difference between intraspecific brood parasitism and interspecific brood parasitism?

intraspecific brood parasitism is when birds will lay eggs in different birds' nests of the same species. interspecific brood parasitism is when females will lay eggs in the nest of another species. 

what is the difference between direct fitness vs indirect fitness. 

direct - number of related offspring an individual has. indirect- number of related non-offspring an individual takes care of. 

What are the 3 criteria for a group to be considered eusocial?

1. cooperative care of young

2. reproductive division of labor

3. overlapping generation

What is meant when we talk about nature vs nurture?  Which is right (are behaviors nature or nurture)?  Name and describe two ways that we can test for heritability in traits.  Give an example of each.

What is meant when we talk about nature vs. nurture is is an animal's behavior is influenced by parents or by their environment. Behaviors can be both nature and nurture. Two ways we can test for the heritability of traits are by using the sexual and natural selection methods. You can use the sexual selection method because in this method, it includes testing for a specific trait by using reproductive or morphological influences between the two sexes. The natural selection method is used to influence reproductive and survivorship in a species. An example of the sexual selection method would be seeing how many eggs a bird lays in a clutch. An example of the natural selection method would be how many baby birds survive out of the clutch.

 Parent-offspring regression analysis 

• Examines the similarity between parents and their offspring in terms of the traits they possess 

• Selection experiment method 

• Different groups of individuals are subjected to differential selection on the trait in question 

There are four levels that animal behavior can be analyzed at. what are they.  These can be further divided into how and why questions.  Which are the how questions and which are the why questions?

When a new male lion takes over a pride he often engages in infanticide (killing of all the cubs).  Give a proposal at all four of these levels for this behavior. 

The four levels that an animal's behavior can be analyzed at are:

1. What are the mechanisms that cause the behavior? (proximate)

-What causes the new male lion to engage in infanticide? This could be due to them not being his cubs or asserting dominance in his new pride. 

2. How does the behavior develop? (proximate)

-He learns it from other male lions when they take over a pride

3. How does the behavior evolve? (ultimate)

- The male lion wants to make sure everyone knows that he is now in charge of the pride. 

4. How does the behavior influence reproduction and survivorship? (ultimate) 

- No cubs survive, which leads to a decrease in the number of individuals in the pride. 

proximate = how or why all abased around his own reproduction

Define Fitness.  What is a direct measure of fitness?  What 3 indirect measures?  Red squirrels will adopt and care for young that are not their own.   How can this be an adaptive trait?  Name and define the fitness theory linked to this behavior

Fitness in evolutionary biology is an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce, passing on its genes to the next generation. A direct measure of fitness is the actual number of offspring an individual produces that survive to reproduce. Indirect measures include survival rate, mating success, and fecundity, which serve as proxies for reproductive success. Red squirrels sometimes adopt and care for young that are not their own, which can be adaptive if it increases the survival of relatives’ offspring or provides parenting experience, ultimately enhancing inclusive fitness. This behavior is explained by kin selection theory, which states that behaviors benefiting relatives can evolve because they help propagate shared genes

We discussed two types of conditioning.  Name and define each.  Give an example of each.  Compare and contrast positive and negative reinforcement and positive and negative punishment.  What types of animals respond to punishment and reinforcement? 

The two types of conditioning we discussed are classical conditioning and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning is learning new associations between stimuli and an innate or unlearned response, such as Pavlov’s dogs learning to salivate at the sound of a bell paired with food. Operant conditioning is learning associations between a behavior and its outcomes, often through reinforcement or punishment; an example is a dog learning to sit to receive a treat. Positive reinforcement involves adding a desirable stimulus, like food, to increase a behavior, while negative reinforcement involves removing an aversive stimulus to increase a behavior. Positive punishment adds an unpleasant stimulus to decrease a behavior, and negative punishment removes a desired stimulus to decrease a behavior. Animals that respond to reinforcement and punishment are those capable of learning from consequences, such as dogs, because they can associate their actions with rewards or deterrents. Overall, reinforcement strengthens behaviors, whereas punishment decreases them, and “positive” means adding a stimulus while “negative” means removing a stimulus. 

Positive Reinforcement: Using food as a stimulus 

Negative Reinforcement: Taking away something when an animal does what you want

Positive Punishment: Adding something an animal doesn't want in response to their behavior

Negative Punishment: Taking away something an animal wants

We discussed multiple sensory modalities.  Name and explain 4 of them.  Give an example of each.  What type of environment does each work best in.

Four sensory modalities are: chemical, visual, auditory, and magnetic. 

Chemical Signals: The Advantages of using chemical signaling are that they are long-lasting and travel long distances. Disadvantages are that they can't be altered once sent and travel very slowly. An example is that cuttlefish smell freshly laid eggs so that they can find a mate during mating season. This type of signal works best in areas that are poor in visual and auditory signals. 

Visual Signals: The advantages of using visual signals are that they travel quickly and can be altered more easily than chemical signals. Some disadvantages are that they need adequate lighting, and they can be blocked easily. The type of environment they work best in is areas with high visibility and good lighting. An example is monarch butterflies and the color of flowers to pollinate them. 

Auditory: The advantages of using auditory signals are that they can't be blocked, as they can go around objects, and they can be quickly changed. Some disadvantages are that they start to die out the farther they go from the source. This works best in environments where there are lots of objects and with species that use calls to communicate with each other. An example is with elephants and their long-distance calls. 

Magnetic: The advantages of magnetic signals are that they need to be the most accurate when an animal is close to the equator, but a disadvantage is that they get less accurate the farther away from the equator you get. This works best in aquatic environments. An example is that a lot of migratory creatures in the ocean use magnetic signals to guide them in the right direction when they are migrating. 

We have discussed song learning in birds extensively.  Explain song development in male birds from a learning perspective, a developmental perspective, a neurological perspective.  What are the two types of learners that birds fall into?

Song development in male birds involves learning, development, and neurological processes. From a learning perspective, young male birds acquire songs by listening to adult tutors, often their fathers or neighbors, and then practicing those sounds until they can accurately reproduce them. From a developmental perspective, song learning occurs in stages: first the sensory phase, when the bird memorizes the tutor song, and then the sensorimotor phase, when the bird practices and refines its own song through trial and error. From a neurological perspective, specialized brain regions, such as the HVC and RA, control song production and learning, while auditory pathways help the bird match its vocalizations to the memorized template. Birds are generally classified into two types of learners: open-ended learners, which can learn new songs throughout their lives, and closed-ended learners, which have a fixed period for song learning early in life

There are several reasons that a male may develop ornamentation.  Describe the good genes hypothesis and the handicap principle (ensure to mention a key sub-hypothesis of each). Also, describe sensory exploitation and runaway sexual selection and give an example of each.

The good genes hypothesis assumes that a female will choose it's mate based on the traits they possesses. If the female feels as though the male contains "good genes," they will favor that male's sperm. A trait that some females favor is being a good parent, so if the females see that the male is a good parent, they will choose to mate with them rather than a male who is seen as a "bad" parent. An example of this is in Daddy Long-Legs.  The handicap principle is that having good traits can decrease their likelihood to survive, but it can indicate that they have good fitness, such as in the Hamilton-Zuk hypothesis. Runaway sexual selection occurs when the male and female evolve with each other. An example of this would be a species that lives with each other, such as in birds, where both the male and female are present in raising their young. Sensory exploitation is when a signal from a conspecific triggers a response in another conspecific. 

sub hypothesis: sexy son hypothesis sensory explotation.

We discussed many ways that an animal can navigate.  Name 4, describe each, and give an example.  

Four ways an animal can navigate are: physical landmarks, sun, stars, and the magnetic field. Animals in the ocean can use physical landmarks as a guide to help them navigate where they are going during migration. Animals such as birds can use the sun as a sort of compass to help guide them in where they are going. When the sun starts to set later in the day, they know that it is time to migrate for the winter. Animals that are nocturnal, such as bats, can use the stars to guide them, also as a sort of compass. Animals can use the magnetic field to help orient themselves. The magnetic field flows from south to north and is strongest at the poles and weakest at the magnetic equator. An example would be dolphins during migratory season using the poles/equator as a guide to where they are going. 

We talked about natal dispersal.  As discussed earlier in the year, all behaviors can be explained at the four levels explained by Tinbergen (function, evolution, causation, and development).  Explain natal dispersal at each of these four levels.

Function (adaptation): Natal dispersal helps reduce competition for resources, mates, and nesting sites between parents and offspring, increasing the likelihood that the young will survive and reproduce.

Evolution (phylogeny): Dispersal has evolved across many species as a strategy to prevent inbreeding and promote gene flow between populations, enhancing genetic diversity.

Causation (mechanism): Hormonal changes, such as increased levels of sex hormones, environmental cues, and social interactions trigger the dispersal behavior in juveniles, prompting them to leave the natal area.

Development (ontogeny): Dispersal is influenced by an individual’s age, growth, and learning experiences, as juveniles develop the physical and behavioral capabilities necessary to leave and navigate new territories successfully.