BIOL 1200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Adaptive Behavior
Document Summary
Proximate questions address the mechanisms that produce a behavior: Environmental stimuli that trigger a behavior and the genetic and physiological mechanisms that make it possible. Ex: how does an animal carry out a particular behavior: ultimate questions about behavior. Ultimate questions address the evolutionary significance of a behavior: How a behavior increases the evolutionary fitness of the animal demonstrating it, helping it to survive and reproduce in its environment. Increasing day length triggers the release of breeding hormones. Ample food is available for chicks at this time: cq: red-crowned cranes breed in spring and early summer. Breeding is most likely to be successful in spring and early summer. Hormonal changes in the spring trigger breeding behaviors. The male courts the much larger female for up to eight hours. He strums on the strands of her web as he slowly approaches her.
