BLG 144 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Proximate And Ultimate Causation, Mate Choice, Kin Selection
Document Summary
Behavioural ecology: aim to understand how and why an animal"s behavior is adapted to the environment in which it lives. Natural selection> variation amongst individuals with competition for survival and reproduction. For behavior to evolve: must have behavior alternatives in the population, differences in behavior must be heritable, some behaviours must confer greater reproductive success than others. Proximate causation: how actions occur in terms of the neurological, hormonal and skeletal- muscular mechanisms involved. Ultimate causation: why actions occur related to adaptive advantage or evolution explains why the individual evolved the behavior. Fixed action patterns (inflexible behavior ex: kangaroo rat jump back) are examples of innate behavior: inherited from parents < shows no learning. More commonly, behavior changes in response to learning and shows flexibility in response to changing environmental conditions. Most behavior is flexible and condition dependent. Cost benefit analysis: animals appear to weight the costs and benefits of responding to a particular situation in various ways.
