Midterm 2

Question 1

mating systems

Answer 1

social association and the number of sexual partners an individual has during a breeding season

Question 2

male fitness

Answer 2

male wants largest number of sexual partners he can obtain in a breeding season

Question 3

serial monogamy

Answer 3

different mate in a different season but 1 mate during season

Question 4

social monogamy

Answer 4

exclusive living arrangement between 1 male and 1 female but it makes no assumptions about mating exclusivity or parental care

Question 5

mate-guarding

Answer 5

male prevents other males from gaining access to female before, during, and after copulation

Question 6

in what situations would polygyny evolve?

Answer 6

male has control over territory/resources, no parental care by males (sole female care), females are aggregated in environment, food availability, predator protection

Question 7

polygyny threshold hypothesis

Answer 7

polygyny mating will be advantageous for the female when benefits achieved by mating high quality male + given access to his resources more than compensate the high cost of sharing that male with other females

Question 8

female defense polygyny

Answer 8

occurs when males can monopolize and aggregation of females directly

Question 9

resource defense policy

Answer 9

males defend territory rich in resources that females are looking for, males do not protect females

Question 10

lek polygyny

Answer 10

temporary territory specifically for mating; no food, no territory to defend, no nest, no parental care, well-traveled route by females, migratory animals, female mate choice, males display against each other for females to choose

Question 11

parental care

Answer 11

example of behavior that would benefit a species by promoting survival or well being of the next generation (offspring) at a cost to the resources of the current generation

Question 12

metazoans

Answer 12

multicellular creatures, eukaryotes - have their genetic material in a nucleus

Question 13

protozoa

Answer 13

one cell, eukaryotes

Question 14

bacteria

Answer 14

no nucleus, genome is loose in the cytoplasm

Question 15

examples of universal behaviors

Answer 15

locomotion, sensory discrimination, orientation responses, coordinated movement, habituation

Question 16

browse hypothesis

Answer 16

long neck of giraffes under pressure from other herbivores to reach the tops of trees where other species could not reach - but no fossil of the middle stage neck length

Question 17

neck for sex hypothesis

Answer 17

sexual selection, males engage in combat with their necks, hitting each other with more than 2000 lbs of force, long neck males preferred by females, have more progeny than short neck males

Question 18

observational approach to studying behavior

Answer 18

most common, least reliable, simply observe, provides only weak (statistical) inferences because sometimes only a few observations are made

Question 19

experimental approach

Answer 19

hypothesis and controls, direct method and reconstruction

Question 20

direct method of experiments

Answer 20

exploits the fact that in natural populations, not all individuals are alike; thus if you can identify a particular adaptive trait, then you can directly observe if the possessor of that trait will survive and reproduce better than conspecific competitors who do not have that trait (ex. pepper moths on a white tree)

Question 21

reconstruction method of experiment

Answer 21

artificially manipulated groups, most experimental animal behavior studies are reconstruction, ex.) barn swallow tail length

Question 22

comparative approach

Answer 22

comparing traits and environments across taxa in search of correlations that test hypotheses about adaptation, biological and phylogenetic

Question 23

biological comparative approach

Answer 23

1. comparison of the same species living in diff areas and under diff selection pressures, ex.) moose in yellowstone vs everywhere else
2. comparison of two diff species living in same place, ex.) kittiwake and gull egg removal behavior

Question 24

phylogenetic comparative approach

Answer 24

use evolutionary inferences to understand behavior, ex.) stotting in gazelles

Question 25

von uexkull - 2 components of animal perception

Answer 25

1. spatial - how we see space
2. temporal - how we see time

Question 26

biological clock

Answer 26

internal clock, measures time at the same rate under all biological conditions, gives all animals the ability to tell time; nothing affects it - just keeps running at constant speed; reset by light (usually sunlight)

Question 27

short day responders (fall)

Answer 27

sun rising later everyday, declining photoperiod, clock adjusts, triggers response - extra eating and storing of lipids in prep; for migratory animals - triggers zugunruhe (migratory restlessness)

Question 28

long day responders (spring)

Answer 28

days getting longer, triggers mating behavior - have babies in spring

Question 29

natal state

Answer 29

where the animal is born or hatched

Question 30

short distance movement

Answer 30

chemical gradients, ex.) vultures circling in response to smell of dead animal, signal gets weaker as you move away from it - stimulus intensity gradient, no turbulence for this process to work

Question 31

2 types of response to gradients

Answer 31

taxis and kinesis

Question 32

taxis

Answer 32

directed movement (generally larger animals), animal responds to gradient by moving in a straight line
1. tropotaxis - organism needs 2 viably spaced receptors to figure out where stimulus is and move in a straight line
2. klinotaxis - movement is straight up the gradient, but takes a sinusoidal path (wave like movement)

Question 33

kinesis

Answer 33

undirected movement, not in a straight line, generally smaller animals
1. klinokinesis - turning rate proportional to stimulus intensity
2. orthokinesis - the stimulus intensity determines the organism’s speech of movement

Question 34

3 levels of migration

Answer 34

piloting, compass orientation, true navigation

Question 35

piloting

Answer 35

the ability to find a goal by referring to landmarks (not always visual, can be olfactory)

Question 36

compass orientation

Answer 36

the ability to head in a geographical direction, use the stars
1. compasses - star compasses, sun compasses
2. geomagnetic orientation - earth has stable geomagnetism

Question 37

true navigation

Answer 37

the ability to establish and maintain a reference to the goal; if you translocate the animal, they adjust and get to their destination (mechanism unknown)