Download Lec 2 Introduction to Behavioral Ecology_ Lec 2


What exactly is “Behavior” and “Behavioral Ecology”?
o Behavior
• All observable or measurable muscular or
secretory responses (or lack thereof) and
related phenomena like changes in blood
flow, surface pigments, etc., in response to
changes in an animal’s internal or external
environment

Using this definition, behavior is
broadly inclusive
o Simply like sweating or panting
o To more complex like
• Courtship
• Communication

Behaviors are not random
o Animals respond in specific
ways to specific stimuli in
their internal or external
environment
o For example,
• Temperature
• Response to predator
• Response to hunger
o Based on evolutionary
history

Darwin (1859), Origin of the Species
o Contains many anecdotal stories of animal behavior
o Instinct Chapter- suggests ways in which natural selection may have
acted gradually to shape rudimentary forms of instinctive behaviors
into sophisticated instincts

Darwin’s 4 postulates (review)
o 1) Traits of organisms vary
o 2) Variation causes differences in survival and reproduction
o 3) This variation is heritable
o 4) Survival and reproduction are non-random

Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871)
o First attempt to explain sexual behaviors

But in the 1800s behavior was often anthropomorphized

C.L. Morgan (academic grandchild of Darwin) spoke out against
anthropomorphic attributes of behaviors
o We should "endeavor to distinguish fact from observer’s inference”
o “In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise
of a higher physical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of
one which stands lower in the psychological scale”

Oskar Pfungst’s 1907 study of the performance of Clever Hans- a
horse reported to read numbers, spell, and to make calculations
o Pfungst used trials in which the examiners did and did not know the
answers to the questions
o Hans could only correctly answer the questions when his examiners
knew the answers
o Hans had learned to respond to small involuntary movements of
examiners and couldn’t actually read or perform calculations
 Early-Mid
1900s
o Ethology developed
• The study of the
evolutionary or
functional significance
of species specific
behaviors
Konrad Lorenz
Niko Tinbergen
o Investigated the idea that behavior could be approached
evolutionarily
• If so, then behaviors could be used to classify animals just as
anatomical, morphological or physiological traits are used
• i.e., instinctive behaviors are similar in more closely related species and
differ more in less related species
• But, even though they are similar in closely related species, they are still
nonetheless different
• Ethologists formed ethograms
• A catalogue, list, or inventory of behaviors for a species
• This ethogram would then be used to ask questions regarding the
adaptiveness or function of the various behaviors

Konrad Lorenz
o Famous for theory of
imprinting


Form the basis for how many behavior studies are done
today
Proximate causes of behavior
o Causal explanations are concerned with mechanisms
o How does something work or develop
1) Causation?
2) Development/Ontogeny?

Ultimate causes of behavioral diversity
o Functional explanations focus on why these behaviors have been
selected
o Why did a behavior evolve? Why was it selected?
3) What is the adaptive advantage or function?
4) What is the evolutionary history of the animal which led to this
behavior?
The four major questions of behavior classified by explanation type: a dog wagging its tail
Type of explanation Question
Answer
Proximate cause
1a Causation
(physiological)
Sensory cells detect a human companion and the
CNS sends impulses that activate the dogs
muscles
1b Causation
(cognitive)
Dog recognizes the human and decides to wag
its tail
2. Ontogeny
Tail wagging is genetically programmed but dog
learns to identify his companions
3. Function
Taig wagging signals the dog’s friendly intentions
toward its social group, fostering its membership
and its survival and reproduction
4. Evolutionary
history
Long ago, tail wagging occurred sporadically
when dogs interacted and overtime was modified
into a signal during greetings
Ultimate cause
o Ethologists also gave us concepts like
• Appetive behaviors
• Variable acts or behaviors
• Not necessarily the same among members of the same
species
• For example, how an animal finds food or mates
• Consummatory behaviors
• Invariable acts always performed the same by all members
of the species
• Stereotypical behaviors repeated without variation
• For example, mating, killing prey
o Consummatory behaviors
tend to be fixed
• That is they represent a fixed
action pattern (FAP)
• A FAP is the behavior
produced in response to a
specific stimulus, the sign
stimulus
• The sign stimulus triggers
some genetically coded
innate releasing mechanism
to produce the FAP
• Sticklebacks -Stickleback video


Another Tinbergen
experiment
Red spot on beak of herring
seagulls stimulates pecking
feeding behaviors by juvenile
gulls
o Spots of different color do not
induce pecking
o Movement is also a key
stimulus
o While there are FAPs, there are also
modal action patterns
• These may actually be more common
• MAPs are the mode behavior
• i.e., most of the individuals respond
to the sign stimulus with a specific
behavior, but not all individuals do
• There is variation in response to the
sign stimulus among individuals
• Allows for evolution
o Regardless, FAPs and MAPs result in
species-typical behaviors
• Behaviors broadly characteristic of a
species and are performed by all
members of the species

Comparative/Behavioral Psychology also developed in the
early –mid 1900s
o -Focused on behaviors that could be measured, trained, and
changed in individuals (rather than the species)
• All behaviors are acquired through conditioning (learning)
• Developed to examine environmental requirements for behavioral
development in the young
o Championed by James Watson
• “give me a dozen healthy infants, well -formed, and my own specified
world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take anyone at random
and train them to become any type of specialist I might select - doctor,
lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and, yes, even beggar man and thief ,
regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations,
and race of his ancestors”

Classical Conditioning- Pavlov’s Dog
o Dogs salivate when presented with food
o If presented with food and a bell, the
dog learns to associate food with the
bell
o After conditioning to predictive stimulus
(bell), salivates at bell

Instrumental Conditioning- Skinner
Box
o Animal performs a behavior and is
either rewarded or punished
B. F.
Skinner
“Nature vs Nurture”


After 6 days, chicks prefer to
peck at the model of their own
species
the tendency to peck is
probably innate, but the object
that is pecked is modified as a
result of experience

Wells 1958
o Cuttlefish latency to attack shrimp declines with or without
conditioning
• i.e. learning can take place without reinforcement
• Counters the idea that conditioning is necessary for learning
Rewarded
Not
Rewarded
Starved

The experiment involved nine independent groups of chicks:
o Tested their pecking accuracy in relation to maturity and practice
• Chicks were kept naïve by keeping them in the dark

Problems with ALL behaviors are innate
o Genes do affect behavior, but not all behavior patterns are inherited
o All animals develop within some environment that shapes their
behaviors
o Experiments which attempt to deprive an animal of an environment
are still presenting an environment where learning can take place

Problems with ALL behaviors are learned
o Learning is a process that changes pre-existing behaviors
o There are several experiments that show that some behaviors can
be learned or “trained” no matter the conditioning

Therefore, all behaviors are a product of both genes and
the environment
 Developed
in 1978
o E. O Wilson (U of A
graduate)
o Merges ethology and
social organization
• i.e., looks at evolution of
social behaviors
• How and why certain
social organizations have
evolved
 Examples:
o Why do animals act
cooperatively?
• Dolphins and other
marine mammal act
as a group to corral
fishes
o Cleaner animals
• Cleaner shrimp and cleaner
wrasse have “cleaning
stations” in which they feed
off invertebrate parasites
on unrelated fishes

The newest discipline to contribute to behavioral ecology:
Conservation behavior
“In a world that is patently disturbed and as pristine environments
that serve as scientific baselines disappear, it will be increasingly
difficult to determine which behaviors are adaptive and which
anachronistic.”
 Advocates
for the
application of animal
behavior to wildlife
conservation problems
o Applies behavior to
conservation,
restoration, and
management
 For
instance, determining what habitat animal
perceive as risky to reduce human disturbance