BIOL 1108 Lecture 18: Chapter 45 Animal Behavior
Document Summary
Generally, a response to a stimulus (a piece of information gathered about the environment) Everything an organism does & how it does it. For any behavior, we can ask what causes it, how it develops, what adaptive function it serves, and how it evolved. Animal behavior is shaped in part by genes acting through the nervous and endocrine systems. Learning is a change of behavior as a result of experience. Orientation, navigation, and biological clocks all require information processing. Communication involves an interaction between a sender and a receiver. Social behavior is shaped by natural selection. Behavior is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Behavior evolves by natural selection, just like any other traits. These traits have a (partial) genetic basis. A common way to interpret a behavior: how does it increase survival; and reproductive success? (i. e. , ultimate causation) A sequence of unlearned behaviors that is essentially unchangeable and invariant.
