Animal Behavior Notes

  • Innate behavior - behavior that is developmentally fixed such that all individuals in a population exhibit the same response to a stimulus

    • said to be ‘hard-wired into the genes’ and instintictive

    • stimulus to innate behavior → releaser

  • Learned behavior - behavior that is acquired, altered, or eliminated due to an animal’s experiences.

    • some types of learning overlap with other behaviors (i.e. imprinting requires some level of innate/genetic ability)

  • Characteristics of Innate Behaviors

    • Fixed Action Patterns (FAP)

      • sequence of behaviors that don’t change and once initiated by a sign stimulus or releaser, is always completed the same way

      • more prominent the stimulus → greater response

      • automatic, no thinking

    • Biological Clocks/Rhythms

      • environmental stimuli or internal (endogenous) stimuli trigger behaviors in animals

        • Circadian rhythms are 24 hour cycles/biological clocks that influence behavior.

        • Circannual rhythms influence yearly cycles of behavior like migration

    • Communication btwn animals

      • a stimulus transmitted from one animal to another will elicit a specific response (typically in the form of chemical, tactile, and/or visual stimuli)

      • Special Case: Pheromones

        • chemical stimuli that are produced by one organism and, when released, have an effect on the behavior of other organisms of the same species.

    • Movement

      • Kinesis - general change in activity or non-directional behavior by an animal in response to a stimulus. Fast movement usually indicates a search for comfort zone, slow movement indicates it has found it.

      • Taxis - a directed movement by animals either towards or away from stimulus.

  • Learned Behaviors

    • Imprinting - innate behavior that’ll develop when an organism is exposed to a stimulus within a critical or sensitive period of time.

      • some genetic input/innate ability to imprint/be programmed

      • stimulus or release may be chemical or visual, depends on developmental stage of the animal.

    • Spatial Learning

      • the establishment of a memory that reflect the organism’s environment by forming a cognitive map

      • The learned ability to associuate one environmental feature to another. A search image is often involved. A search image is often involved.

      • Habituation - loss of a response to unimportant stimuli

      • operant conditioning

        • learning by trial and error

      • classical conditioning - responding to a new substitute stimulus as itf it were the stimulus stimulus.

    • Cognition - process of knowing that involves awareness, reasoning, recollection and judgement (NOT LIMITED TO PRIMATES)

      • i.e. crows using cognition to obtain food

      • i.e. honey bees ability to navigate patterned mazes

    • Social Learning

      • learning by observing other animals

12/16 Behavior and Fitness

  • Natural selection can act on behavioral actions to increase the fitness of a species

  • Altruism and Kin Selection

    • behavior that reduces an animal’s individual fitness but increases the fitness of other individuals in the immediate family or population.

    • Kin selection is the idea that altruistic behavior increases the survival of genes similar to those of the individual even if it does not benefit, or is detrimental to the individual.

  • Agonistic behavior

    • type of behavior that involves a contest of some kind, determining, for example, which individual will get access to food or mates.

  • Dominance Hierarchy - an organization of social animals, in which more dominant animals control less dominant individuals. Actually reduces the intesity of fighting

    • dominance is usually maintained by agonistic behaviors

  • Territoriality - individuals establish choice living space, giving them access to critical resources, especially food and water. Territory is usually maintained by agonistic behaviors.

Energetics

  • Optimal Foraging

    • foraging includes eating and any activity an animal undergoes to obtain food

      • get most food while expending least amount of energy

AP Bio Stats

  • Standard Error

    • determine the precision of the mean value

    • SEx = s/sqrt(n)

  • Make sure the error bars for standard error do not overlap → if they do → lower confidence on precision of results → results are not statistically different from one another

  • Chi Squared