Behavioral Ecology Flashcards
(29 cards)
Behavioural ecology
Concerned with the adaptiveness and evolution of behaviour as well as how is relates to the environment.
Not all behaviour is a plastic/learnt and many have a heritable component
Phenotypic Gambit
an Understanding of genetic architecture is not necessary to study evolution of behaviour
Proximate and ultimate question
Ultimate questions are looking at behaviours evolutionary significance.
Proximate questions look at the immediate cause of the behaviour.
Tinberg's 4 questions
Function evolution causation and development. These address proximate and ultimate questions.
4 ways to test if behaviours inherited
Correlation between parents and offspring (common garden experiments). Cross breeding experiments. Artificial selection experiments. Molecular underpinnings.
methods in behavioural ecology for testing adaptive stories
Observational studies. Long-term observational studies. Experiments. Modelling. Comparisons.
Benefits of group living
Antipredator. Foraging. Information and learning exchange. Cooperation.
Cost of group living
Disease and parasites. competition. Attracting predators.
Antipredator benefits
Dilution of risk because a larger group results in lower risk. Larger numbers may even confuse predator.
Shared vigilance as many eyes on look out for predators allows for early detection of risk. Examples are confusion effect, the many eyes effect and mobbing.
Foraging benefits
Lower level individual diligence as many eyes on predators means greater foraging time. For example the time spent looking for food increases in larger flocks.
Cooperative hunting.
Information and learning
Individuals can find out the location of food from others. Examples include Local enhancement, information centres and social networking.
Large groups are better at solving problems as they are learning together pooling their skills and their collective diversity.
ComPetition
More individuals leads to more competition for food nest sites eccetera. Scramble competition refers to increased aggression longer foraging hours slower growth rate and reproductive rates of that occurs in larger groups.
Disease and parasitism
Higher density of population means increased likelihood for disease at brake and transmission. Higher density also means are higher parasite load for example couldn't Cliff sparrows and blood sucking bugs.
Communication
Defined as the process in which a sender uses specially designed signals to modify the behaviour of the intended receivers. Signals are on average of benefit to the sender otherwise they would not have evolved.
Why did communication evolve
Information about the sender. To provide information about the environment either about predators or food. Signals can also be referential to a subject and decision-making rules. For example vervet monkeys make calls that are specific to the kind of threat identified.
Signal honesty
Signals are kept honest by several mechanisms. Index signals are those that can easily be fake tan delimited by the condition of the signaler. Signals can also be costly or risky to produce creating unnecessary costs to produce them unnecessarily. In rare cases punishment can also keep signals honest.
Cooperation
Groups of animals that work or act together for mutual benefits.
Altruistic behaviour
Helping others at cost to oneself. immediate or long-term effects in improving fitness
Reciprocal altruism
Tit-for-tat I give you something you give me something. For example predator inspection in guppies.
Kin selection
process whereby natural selection favours a trait due to its positive effects on the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even when at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Kin selection can lead to the evolution of altruistic behaviour.
CoOperative breeding
Obligatory = Species unable to breed alone or in pairs employ the help of non-breeding individuals for example meerkats.
Facultative = breeding pairs occasionally helped by others example paid kingfishers.
Eusocial = helpers are permanently sterile and help their entire lives. Happens in hymenoptera because they're haplodiploid which means helping siblings has a greater fitness benefit. Sisters related by 0.75.
Hamilton's rule
Altruistic behaviour is more likely to evolve for closer the relatedness of the donor to the recipient and the greater the benefit to the recipient compared with the cost to the donor.
Rb>c
Sexual selection
process by which individuals compete for access to mates and fertilization opportunities.
Male-male competition
occurs when two males of the same species compete for the opportunity to mate with a female. Sexually dimorphic traits, size, sex ratio, and the social situation may all play a role in the effects male–male competition has on the reproductive success of a male and the mate choice of a female
