PSYC 3280 Study Guide - Fall 2018, Comprehensive Midterm Notes - Natural Selection, Sperm Competition, Phylogenetic Tree
12 Oct 2018
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PSYC 3280
MIDTERM EXAM
STUDY GUIDE
Fall 2018
Lecture 1- Principles of Animal Behaviour
• Humans have needed to be interested in animal behaviour to figure out
what to eat, how to protect ourselves from predators, and how to
domesticate wild animals (by conditioning their behaviour)
• Anthropomorphism- ascribing human characteristics to nonhumans
• Darwin
o Species evolution, natural selection
o Comparative psychology- animals were the first beings being
studied in psychology using observational methods to reach the
simplest explanations for the observed behaviours in different
species
o Modern genetics underlies ethology
o Ethology- the scientific study of animal behaviour
• Arctic Tern
o Bird that is elegant in the air, but clumsy on their feet
o Migrate from the Arctic to the Antarctic, and back every year
(must be adapted to the varying temperatures of the whole
globe)
o While migrating, the birds stop along the path for food
(hotspots)
o Halfway through the journey, Half the birds will follow the coast
of Africa, while the other half along the coast of south America,
to re-meet in Antarctica
o Finding the hotspots was important in determining what parts of
the ocean to focus conservation efforts on
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2
Types of Questions
• Mechanism: what stimuli cause the behaviour? What are the immediate
underlying processes? (proximate)
• Development: how does behaviour change across the lifespan?
(proximate)
• Survival Value: how does the behaviour impact survival and reproduction
of individuals or the species? (ultimate)
• Evolutionary history: how did the behaviour evolve? What is the
evolutionary history of the species? (ultimate)
• Behaviour- coordinated responses (observable behaviour) of living
organisms to internal/external stimuli
• Behaviour frequencies change through natural selection, learning, and
cultural transmission
Approaches
• Conceptual, theoretical, empirical
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find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
What is the evolutionary history of the species? (ultimate: behaviour- coordinated responses (observable behaviour) of living organisms to internal/external stimuli, behaviour frequencies change through natural selection, learning, and cultural transmission. Natural selection: direct fitness- number of offspring produced compared to other species, reproductive success- # born, # weaned, # survived to mate. Artificial selection: humans select behaviours and physical traits in animals (darwin bred pigeons, different breeds of the same species result from many generations of selective breeding. In order for natural selection to occur there must be: variations in a trait, fitness/reproductive consequences of the trait, the trait needs to be inheritable, sexual selection, directional selection, disruptive selection, stabilizing. Anisogamy and the bateman principle: anisogamy- male and female gametes are not the same in size. Intersexual selection- members of one sexy choose mates from the other sex (females) Males that possess that trait will be favored by females (red in primates)
