Animal Behavior
Objectives
 Define behavior
 Be familiar with the range of animal behavior
 Understand the methods that ethologists use to
study behavior
 Employ some of these methods to make your
own observations of behavior
Definitions
Behavior is the response of an
animal to environmental
stimuli
The study of behavior is called
ethology
Ethologists are interested both
in proximate and ultimate
reasons for behaviors
Ethology
Evolution
Psychology
Ecology
Behavior
Genetics
Physiology
Behavior and genetics
Innate behaviors:
stereotyped behaviors that
are based on preset neural
pathways and are evoked
by a key stimulus
Learned behavior: a behavior
the animal has developed
based on its experience with a
particular stimulus
Behavior, Ecology, and Evolution
 Behavioral ecology is the
study of the adaptive values
of certain behaviors
 Since behaviors affect fitness
and often have a genetic
component, behaviors can
evolve!!!
Types of behaviors
 Migratory behavior
 Territorial behavior
 Animal communication
 Reproductive behavior
 Social behavior
 Foraging behavior
Migratory Behavior
 Migration: long, two-way
movements of animals,
usually seasonal
 Precise migration patterns
and highly specific
destinations
 Purely innate in some;
appears to be some learning
involved in others.
Territorial Behavior
Any behavior designed to
maintain an animal’s exclusive
use of an area.
Territorial behavior is costly
Energy
Predation
Competition
Why?
• Increased food availability or foraging area
• Exclusive access to mates (increased reproductive success)
• Safety
Reproductive Behavior
Reproductive strategy: behaviors that maximize its
reproductive success. (Typically costly)
Social Systems
 Social groups
 Pros of sociality
 Shared food sources
 Kin selection
 Protection from predation
 Larger prey items
 Cons of sociality
 Sharing or competing for
resources
 Disease
Social Systems
Eusociality-multigenerational family
groups in which the vast majority of
individuals cooperate to aid relatively
few (or even a single) reproductive
group members.
Invertebrates:
 hymenopterans (ants, bees)
 isopterans (termites)
 homopterans (aphids)
Vertebrates
 naked mole rats
Other social systems are highly variable
in composition and seasonality
Foraging Behavior
 Maximize efficiency
 Are innate, but may be altered
by:
 ecology
 season
 predator, conspecificity, or food
abundance
 Can be dangerous and time
consuming
Animal Cognition
“Thinking” includes problem-solving,
planning, deception, and predatorspecific vocabulary
 Some animals exhibiting relatively high
cognition
 Chimps
 Corvids (ravens, crows)
 Octopi
Observational Methods
 Ad Libitum – take notes on everything you see
 Focal Sampling – one animal, observing a defined set of
behaviors
 Instantaneous/Scan Sampling – at set time points, note
behaviors of one or more animals
 All occurrences – one behavior, note every time it is
performed
 Each method has advantages and
disadvantages and can cause different
biases.
Today’s Experiment
 We will test habitat selection in isopods, and
foraging preferences in crickets
Pillbug Taxis
Treatment A
Phototaxis
Treatment B
Chemotaxis
Hydrotaxis
Cricket Apparatus
- Food preference
- Hunger
- Illumination
Next Week
 Behavior Lab Report Due
 Recreate tables or make a graph of pillbug
experiments
 Create table or graph with cricket food preferences
 Attach sketch, but include observations and
experiment formulation in the appropriate sections in
your lab report.
 Quiz
 Ecology Lab
 Due at end of lab next week!
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Remember to print out lab manual
You must come prepared & have read your lab