BIO1022 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Behavioral Ecology, Ethology
30 May 2018
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BIO1022 – Lecture 8 – Week 4 – Animal Behaviour
- behaviour
• - typically concerns movement
•
o need to move to find food, water, avoid predation, find mates
• results from a response to either an external or internal stimulus
• behaviour is the nervous system’s response to a stimulus carried out by
the muscular or the hormonal system
• subject to natural selection
- ethology - the scientific study of animal behaviour - now called behavioural
ecology
- biological species concept - assumes that animals of same species
- behaviour maintaining a species difference - even though they make look
similar
- honest sexual signal - provides info about overall fitness
- causation
• proximate causes
•
o concerned with the mechanisms underlying the behaviour
o includes
o
▪ environmental stimulus that triggers the response
▪ genetic and physiological mechanisms
• ultimate causes
•
o concerned with the evolutionary significance of the behaviour and
why it is favoured by selection
- behaviour influenced by both genes and the environment
- role of genes
• innate behaviour
- learning - the modification of behaviour through experience
- imprinting - a learned of behaviour caused by exposure to particular stimuli
during a critical period in the animal’s development
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