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Ornithology (BIO 456/585)
Final Exam Study Guide
Most of this exam will cover new material presented since the third exam, as outlined below.
The final will be comprehensive in that I will also repeat questions or parts of questions from the
first three exam. I will not ask new questions on this older material, so all you have to do is read
over your old exams and make sure you know how to answer all those questions. Expect about
15% of the final exam to be on material from these first three exams.
Terms and Concepts: know definitions, significance to ornithology and how to explain concepts
if asked to do so in an essay question. Graphs and models: be able to draw and label graphs,
explain and give examples.
Lecture XVI Chick Rearing
Egg size, body size, and incubation periods
Exceptions to trends: passerines, kiwi
Factors that control egg size
Food availability and stable versus unstable resources
Predation and altricial versus precocial young
Percent of altricial and precocial young in tropics and temperate zones
Clutch size and egg size
David Lack and Food Limitation Hypothesis
Graph of Food Limitation Hypothesis with brood size
Mixed results of tests for hypothesis
Gulls and reproductive costs, adult survivorship
Third chick disadvantage in Western Gulls
Graph of reproductive success of eggs 1, 2, and 3 with adult age
Brandt’s cormorants and brood sizes, upwelling
Numerical response in ecology
Snowy owls and lemmings
Obligate and facultative siblicide
South Polar Skuas
Six preconditions for siblicide as a form of brood reduction
Four factors for maximizing reproductive success in multi-egg clutches
Patterns in chick growth curves and why
Chicks that fledge above or below average adult weight and why
Shearwaters, swifts, ground nesting birds, murres and murrelets
Chick growth and thermoregulation
Creches (in nest and by colony)
Large broods and thermoregulation, food demands in titmice in England
Lecture XVII Cooperative Breeding
Definition of cooperative breeding
Helpers and evolution of helping behavior
Three advantages for helping behavior
Five possible causes for helping behavior
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Non-adaptive hormonal stimulation
Inclusive fitness
Risk of dispersal
Experience at breeding, raising young
Access to mates
Examples of long-term studies of cooperative breeding systems
Acorn Woodpeckers and Walt Koenig
Clans and clan sizes
Breeding pairs, activities by clan members
Pygmy nuthatches and threesomes
Advantages to helpers
Mobbing, access to winter roost cavities
Florid scrub-jay and Glen Woolfenden
Scrub/oak/palmetto habitat and evolution of helping
Fossil record of scrub-jays in Florida and coastal scrub habitat
Delayed breeding, male versus female helpers
Helping for one year of two or more years, survival, reproductive success
WIMPS
Lecture XVIII Social Behavior
Definition of social behavior
Feeding flocks, intra and interspecific
Graph of optimal flock size with time budgets for scanning, feeding, fighting
Mixed feeding flocks and advantages
Feeding guild and vultures in Africa
Roosting flocks and four advantages
Predator avoidance, thermoregulation
Information exchange, pair bonds
Pygmy nuthatch winter roosts
Gull clubs and function
Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen
Foundations for behavioral ecology
Fixed action patterns
Learned versus innate behavior
Greylag geese and fixed action patterns
Behavior in terms of causation, ontongeny, adaptation, and phylogeny
Internal and external factors in causation
Double-scratch foraging in New World sparrows
Winter attendance of territories in gulls, murres
Habituation
Behaviors as phylogenetic characters
Courtship displays, urohydrosis
Learned behavior in titmice and milk bottles
Methods for studying behavior
Quantifying behaviors
Penguin predation study
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Lecture XIX Avian Conservation
Contributions of birds studies to biology
Five reasons bird studies are important in biology
Population and community ecology
David Lack, Robert McArthur, Peter Grant
Island biogeography
Optimal foraging theory
Behavioral studies by Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen
Neurobiology and Fernando Nottenbohn
Physiological studies
Hidden leks
Conservation biology, habitat loss
Trends in migratory birds in 1970s
Rock Creek Park, Washington DC
Breeding bird surveys, Xmas bird counts
Radar studies of migration, Sidney Gauthreaux
Causes for declines, forest fragmentation
Tropical deforestation and winter habitat
Source/sink areas in ecology
IUCN Red Data Books
Endangered Species Act 1973
California Condor recovery, use of fossil record
Noel Snyder
Whooping crane as successful program
Dusky seaside sparrow as unsuccessful program
Partners in Flight
San Pedro River valley, AZ
Western Hemisphere Shorebird Reserve Network (WHSRN)
Ivory-billed Woodpecker, rediscovery and lost again