Social Behavior

Question 1

what are the six types of sociality

Answer 1

• gregarious
• sophisticated social groups
• solitary
• massive societies
• hierarchies (pecking orders)
• machiavelian groups

Question 2

what are sophisticates social groups

Answer 2

• individuals have an identity and others in the group are able know know and understand that identity

Question 3

what are machiavellian groups

Answer 3

• there is a social hierarchy but there is a lot of strategy and game play

Question 4

what are the physical benefits of social groups

Answer 4

• A social group can provide protection from a harsh environment
• The larger number of fly larvae helps break down all the food – food only available if enough of them are present at the same time to help break it down and make it rot
• Everyone benefits when there are more of them

Question 5

what are the protection benefits of social groups

Answer 5

• Many eyes principle – in a big group, it is easier to to keep look out for predators
  the oxon are able to form a very safe and stay vigilant
• Its very hard to predate on a flock of birds because they’re constantly moving and interchanging so its hard to target an individual bird
• They cant just fly through with their mouth open and catch what they fly through
• Passive protection from being in a group
  Survival curve

Question 6

what are the predation benefits of social groups

Answer 6

ex: birds share where the food is

Question 7

what are some of the costs of social groups

Answer 7

• Animals want to be better than other individuals in the group at reproduction

Question 8

what is subordination

Answer 8

• in a hierarchy, some individuals will be more likely to survive and reproduce than others
• some individuals are kept at a higher fitness
  
  • any individual can have a chance of moving up in the hierarchy

Question 9

what is mutualism

Answer 9

• both organisms benefit from the behavior

Question 10

selfish behavior

Answer 10

• pos effect on donor
• neg effect on recipient

Question 11

reciprocity

Answer 11

• negative, then positive effect on donor
• positive effect on recipient
• individuals must have memory and be able to trust each other
• you do something for another individual and then they do something back

Question 12

altruism

Answer 12

• often done when the population in important for the individual
• harms donor
• benefits recipient
  ex:
• Females most likely to call if they are near their own family and the offspring of themselves and their family members
• Least likely to make a call around males
• Call the most when there are the most relatives nearby – prioritize how much of their genetic material (same genes as their relatives) gets passed on

Question 13

spiteful behavior

Answer 13

• cost to the donor and recipient
• some say that true spiteful behavior is not common in the animal kingdom
  ex:
• Egg is best for the fish eating it if it is freshly laid
• Most harmful to layer if you eat a more mature egg because it’s closer to hatching
• How do we know they done this on purpose?

Question 14

Kin selection

Answer 14

• an individual could still have reproductive fitness, even if they have no direct offspring
• Two brothers because theyr’e 50% related to their brothers, so it’s the same amount of their genetic material passed down
• “I would lay down my life for two brothers or eight cousins”

Question 15

eusociality

Answer 15

1. there is cooperative brood-care (including protections)
2. There is a reproductive division of larbor
   
   • reproductives - queens or males
   • workers - sterile females
3. overlapping generations
   
   • offspring assist their parents

Question 16

haplodiploidy

Answer 16

Question 17

haplodiploid relatedness factors

Answer 17

• Only two daughter types because the male is haploid
• Sisters are more related to each other than mother to daughter
• Beneficial for the worker to produce more sisters because they are more closely related to their sisters than to their mothers

Question 18

what are some problems that we don’t have an explanation for

Answer 18

• not all eusocial animals are haplodiploid
  
  • not even all hymenoptera are eusocial
• some colonies will have more than one queen and that queen will have mated with multiple males
  
  • workers will not be as related to each other as in the simple example

Question 19

what is morphological specialization

Answer 19

• animals will have different physical features depending on their job in the colony
  ex:
• Atta ants cut the leaves
• Size comparison between he atta and and the smallest worker ants
• some ants have flat face that helps them smell out the door so they can figure out if the ants walking by are from their colony or not

Question 20

what are some specialization jobs in honeybees?

Answer 20

• reproduction
• foraging
• defence
• brood care

Question 21

how does behavioral specialization change with age

Answer 21

• Specialization and they move through tasks as they age
• Upregulation of foragers when the bees are older

Question 22

what are some examples of self-organization in humans

Answer 22

• the wave
• building buildings

Question 23

what is global control

Answer 23

• form of self-organization
• someone is in charge
  ex:
• somebody points at people to do the wave
• hiring an architect when building a building

Question 24

what is a self-organized group behavior

Answer 24

• standing up after the person next to you in the wave
• individuals respond to local conditions when building a building
  ex:
• wasp nest - no single wasp knows what the whole nest looks like

Question 25

how are pheromone trails an example of self-organization

Answer 25

- Pheromone trails are one of the simplest examples of self-organization - Other ants will go along the trail but away from the home to find food - Number of ants on the trail rises exponentially because of the positive feedback loop

Question 26

how are pheromone trails studied in the lab

Answer 26

- The colony makes a decision that the individual ants didn’t know even needed to be made - Whichever side gets chosen at the beginning is more attracted to the next set of ants than the other side - The more ants follow one trail, the more the path gets reinforced because they are all leaving a pheromone trail - Colony typically takes the shortest path unknowingly

Question 27

what are the three strategies of pack hunting

Answer 27

1. tire out prey 2. forced ambush 3. wave washing

Question 28

how do wolves pack hunt?

Answer 28

- they are able to nip the heels of their prey without getting hurt - force prey to keep moving so they get tired

Question 29

how do lions and chimps pack hunt

Answer 29

- Forced ambush - Each label is a different monkey - They have highly organized ambushes

Question 30

how do whales pack hunt?

Answer 30

- Orcas coordinate tail movement to make wave and either knock seal off the iceberg or break the ice under it - They let the seal get back on the ice as an exhaustion strategy