EE BIOL 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Evolutionary Arms Race, Mealworm, Great Tit
23 Oct 2016
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Learning objectives: understand simple adaptive models that quantify costs and benefits to predict behavioral outcomes. Costs and benefits of behavior: costs of behavior. Risk of predation: benefits of behavior. Evolutionary arms race between predators and prey: prey are continually evolving defenses to avoid being eaten, predators are continually evolving counter-defenses. Life-dinner principle: generation time effects selection for defense may be stronger than selection for counter-defense. Prey usually have shorter generation times than their predators: thus, prey defenses may evolve faster than predator counter-defenses in many cases, prey may have less opportunity to learn about predators than vice versa. Economics of prey defense: net profitability = e/tt. E = energy content per prey item. Tt = time required to find and consume prey: tt = ts + th. Ts = search time (time to locate) Th = handling time (time to subdue, ingest, digest: most prey defenses increase ts or th and therefore reduce the profitability of prey.
