Animal Behaviour
Course Website
!  www.adamoliverbrown.com
!  syllabus
!  office
hours
notes
!  discussion forum
!  dates
!  news
!  lecture
BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
What is Behaviour?
!  Prior
Skinner and Hebb
!  All
observable processes by which an
animal responds to perceived changes in
the internal state of its body or the
external world
to 1860s
–  Emotions
–  Habits
–  Manners
–  Customs
–  Instincts
BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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Charles Darwin (1859)
BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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Natural Selection
!  Variation
in
phenotypic traits that
are heritable
!  Variation leads to
differential survival
and/or reproduction
BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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1
Human Behaviour
Group Selection
!  Culture
!  Wynne-Edwards
(1962):
Individual characters
evolved to favour the
survival of the group
(family, population,
species)
BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
!  Date-rape
!  Altruism
!  Inter-male
!  Compassion
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Tinbergen’s 4 Questions (1963)
(how is
behaviour being achieved)
!  Development (how does it
take form?)
!  Function (what is it for?)
!  Evolution (where does it
come from?)
!  Mechanism
(how is
behaviour being achieved)
PROXIMATE
!  Development (how does it
take form?)
!  Function (what is it for?)
!  Evolution (where does it
ULTIMATE
come from?)
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BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
Proximate Questions
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Ultimate Questions
!  What
is the link between the genes and
the behaviour?
!  Is the behaviour hereditary?
!  How does the behaviour develop?
!  What stimuli trigger the onset of the
behaviour?
BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
Tinbergen’s 4 Questions (1963)
!  Mechanism
BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
combats
!  Promiscuity
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!  Has
the behaviour evolved over time?
!  What was the ancestral form of the
behaviour?
!  Why has the ancestral form changed?
!  What is the adaptive value of behaviour?
BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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Darwin’s Heirs
Common Shrew
(Sorex araneus)
!  1)
Sensory systems are most receptive to
larger prey
!  2) Learned from previous experience
cost/benefit of struggle/payoff
!  3) Maximize foraging efficiency
!  4) Offspring of a lineage of selective
foragers (greater survival value)
BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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Mechanism
Comparative
Psychology
Lorenz
Developt
Physiology
Tinbergen
Function
Behavioural
Ecology
Hamilton
Evolution
Evolutionary
Psychology
Pavlov
Ethology
Behavioural Paradox
Theoretical Framework
!  1)
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BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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Inclusive fitness (Hamilton, 1964)
Traits exist that don’t seem to
increase individual fitness
–  Alleles affect social interactions to promote
their transmission through generations
!  2)
Evolutionarily Stable Strategies (ESS:
Maynard-Smith, 1972)
–  Adaptive decision-making is frequency
dependent (best thing to do may depend on
what others are doing)
!  3)
Optimality Theory (Charnov, 1976)
–  Cost/benefit analysis to decision-making
BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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Risky Business
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BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
Why Infanticide?
!  Psycho-social
explanation
–  Abnormal pathological response to
overcrowding?
!  Darwinian
explanation
–  Males gain resources by eating infants
–  Males gain fitness because females re-mate
quicker with them
BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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BIO 3176:
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Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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3
Group Selection
Darwinian Hypothesis
!  If
first hyp. is correct
is not male
but group to which he
belongs
!  Testing group selection
hypothesis
!  1)
Do males kill more when food
stressed? Do they always consume the
infants?
!  2) Do females become sexually receptive
faster than when nursing infant?
!  Beneficiary
–  DNA analysis shows that the next generation
offspring are all sired by new males
–  Correlated to density?
BIO
BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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BIO 3176:
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Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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!  Giant
water bug
(Hemiptera)
!  Males offer protection
of eggs
!  Females may destroy
clutch so he re-mates
with her
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BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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Questions?
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BIO 3176:
3176: Animal
Animal Behaviour
Behaviour
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