Chap.01 Principles of Animal Behavior

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Chap.01 Principles of Animal Behavior

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Text book

• Principles of animal behavior
• 2nd. Ed.
• Author Lee Alan Dugatkin
• 2009, W. W. Norton Company, Inc.

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Preface

• The heart, an examination of the empirical,
  theoretical, and conceptual foundation upon which
  the field of animal behavior rests.
• My aim is to explain underlying concepts in a way
  that is scientifically rigorous but, at the same
  time, accessible to students.
• The goal is to produce a book that instructors
  can use in their courses as well as in their
  research programs.

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Major features

1. A balanced treatment of proximate and ultimate
   factors
2. Learning and cultural transmission presented
   alongside natural selection and phylogeny.
3. A thorough integration of proximate factors,
   including neurobiology, endocrinology,
   development, and molecular genetics.
4. An extensive discussion of phylogeny
5. Interviews of prominent researchers at the end of
   every chapter.
6. The Norton animal behavior DVD

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Contents in brief (I)

1. Principles of animal behavior
2. The evolution of behavior
3. Proximate factors
4. Learning
5. Cultural transmission
6. Sexual selection
7. Mating systems
8. Kinship
9. Cooperation

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Contents in brief (II)

1. Foraging
2. Antipredator behavior
3. Communication
4. Habitat selection, territoriality, and migration
5. Aggression
6. Play
7. Aging and disease
8. Animal personalities

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Chap.01 principles of animal behavior

• Introduction
• Types of questions and levels of analysis
• Three foundations
• Natural selection
• Individual learning
• Cultural transmission
• Conceptual, theoretical, and empirical approaches
• Conceptual approaches
• Theoretical approaches
• Empirical approaches
• Interview with Dr. E. O. Wilson
• An overview of what is to follow

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Ethology

• Although ethology overlaps with ecology, they are
  different disciplines, with ecologists focusing
  on the interaction of organisms with their
  environment, and ethologists investigating all
  aspects of animal behavior.
• The study of animal behavior appears to have been
  so fundamental to human existence that the
  earliest cave painting tended to depict animals.

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Almost everyone is familiar with the roach, often
a pest in households around the world.
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This pendant (??) from the Chrysolakkos funeral
complex in Crete.
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The drawing my depict a lateral intimidation
during an aggressive encounter between antelopes.
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Types of questions and levels of analysis

• Four types of questions
• Immediate stimuli (cue factors) (????)
• Development (?????)
• Survival function (Natural selection)
• Evolutionary history (phylogeny)
• Two levels
• Proximate analysis (????)
• Ultimate analysis (????)

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Three foundations
Natural selection (??)
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Individual learning (??)
2
Cultural transmission (????)
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Foundation 1 Natural selection

• a field cricket with normal wings
• a field cricket with flat wings.
• (C) Sandfly larvae in a parasitized cricket.

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Xenophobia a fear of strangers
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Foundation 2 Individual learning
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Foundation 2 Individual learning
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Not only did grasshoppers in the learning
condition approach the balanced diet dish more
often, but this translated into quicker growth.
Growth rate in grasshoppers is positively
correlated with egg size and number.
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Foundation 3 Cultural transmission

1. When a rat scavenges in the trash, it may
   encounter new food items that are dangerous or
   spoiled and that can lead to illness or even
   death.
2. smelling another rat provides olfactory cues
   about what it has eaten. This transfer of
   information from one rat to another about safe
   foods is a form of cultural transmission.

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Information center hypothesis
Observer rats had a tutor (demonstrator) who was
trained to eat rat chow containing either (CO) or
cinnamon (CIN) flavoring. Once the observer rats
had time to interact with a demonstrator rat, the
observer rats were much more likely to add their
tutors food preferences to their own.
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Conceptual, theoretical, and empirical approaches
(??????????)
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In many species, like the vervets shown here,
mothers go to extreme lengths to provide for and
protect their young offspring. W. D. Hamiltons
kin selection ideas provided a conceptual
framework for understanding the special relations
that close genetic relatives share.
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Theoretical approaches (????)
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Empirical approaches (????)
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Interview with E. O. Wilson (i)

• Sociobiology is the study of the biological basis
  of all forms of social behavior and social
  organization in all kinds of organisms, including
  humans, and organized on a base of ethology and
  population biology.
• Not in 1975 book (sociobiology), but in 1971
  paper (Sociobiology The New synthesis.
• I added the vertebrates to the social insects and
  suggested that sociobiology could serve as a true
  scientific foundation for the social sciences.

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Sociobiology the new synthesis
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Interview with E. O. Wilson (ii)

• Animal behavior is a fundamental and
  extraordinarily interesting subject in its own
  right.
• it is also basic to other disciplines of biology,
  all the way from neuroscience and behavioral
  genetics to ecology and conservation biology.
• Is crucial to conservation biology and its
  applications.

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Contents in brief (I)

1. Principles of animal behavior
2. The evolution of behavior
3. Proximate factors
4. Learning
5. Cultural transmission
6. Sexual selection
7. Mating systems
8. Kinship
9. Cooperation

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Contents in brief (II)

1. Foraging
2. Antipredator behavior
3. Communication
4. Habitat selection, territoriality, and migration
5. Aggression
6. Play
7. Aging and disease
8. Animal personalities

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Discussion questions (i)

1. Why do we need a science of ethology? What
   insights does this discipline provide both the
   scientist and the layperson?
2. Imagine that you are out in a forest, and you
   observe that squirrels there appear to cache
   their food only in the vicinity of certain
   species of plants. Construct a hypothesis for how
   this behavior may have been the result of (a)
   natural selection, (b) individual learning, and
   (c) social learning.

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Discussion questions (ii)

1. What are the primary differences between
   individual learning and social learning?
2. What is the key difference between observational
   and experimental studies in ethology? What are
   some possible advantages to each type of each
   type of study?
3. Why do you suppose that mathematical theories
   play such a large part in ethology? Couldnt
   hypotheses be derived in their absence? Why does
   mathematics force an investigator to be very
   explicit about his or her ethological hypotheses?

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• http//myweb.nutn.edu.tw/hycheng/