ANIMAL BEHAVIOR
OUTLINE
I. What is Animal Behavior (Ethology)?
A. Includes all an animal’s overt, observable activities
B. It is the study of an organism’s strategy for survival
C. Behaviors are mostly instinctive
D. Classic Examples
II. What Is Communication?
A. Action of one organism that alters the behavior of another organism in a
fashion adaptive to one or both of the organisms (Wilson 1975).
B. General characteristics include a Sender, Signal, and Receiver.
C. Mechanisms of Communication
1. Visual Cues
2. Mechanical Cues
3. Chemical Cues
D. Ecological Context of Communication
1. Predation
a. Avoid, locate, or defend against predators
2. Reproduction
a. Mate location and recognition
b. Courtship and Mating
7-1
3. Resource Acquisition
a. Food and Shelter
4. Social Behavior
a. Individual or Status recognition
b. Stress
C. Modes of communication - examples
1. Visual
2. Mechanical
3. Chemical
III. Social Behavior
A. Stress recognition
1. Recognition of disturbed but undamaged conspecifics (others of your
species)
B. Social recognition
1. Recognition of individual or status during agonistic encounters
a. What Are Agonistic Contests?
1) Important in competition for limiting resources
2) Success may depend on a variety of factors
3) Progress through a series of behaviors that increase in
intensity
4) Results in a dominance relationship between combatants –
dominance hierarchy
5) Changes in behavior over repeated contests due to
communication
7-2
b. Dominance hierarchies
1) What they are
2) Why they’re important
IV. Experimental organisms
A. Crayfish
1.
Form hierarchies
2.
B.
C.
D.
Communicate through chemical cues
Sources of chemical signals
1.
urine
2.
gills
Collection of Chemical Signals
Procedures for fighting
1.
Eliminating odor
2.
Fight behavior/measures of intensity
V. Conclusions –
A. Crayfish appear to recognize their opponents status.
B. Urine plays an important role in decreasing the aggressiveness and duration of
encounters.
C. Status recognition is important in dominance relationship maintenance.
D. Urine plays an important communicative role.
7-3