Biol 349: Animal Behavior Lab syllabus (Fall 2015)
Animal Behavior Laboratory (Biol 349)
Instructor: Liam J. Revell (liam.revell@umb.edu)
Office hours: Fridays 10 am – noon or by appointment. ISC-4150.
Meeting time: Wednesdays, 11 am – 2 pm
Description: The Animal Behavior Lab course complements Animal Behavior (Biol 348) with
the goals of bringing to life (literally!) concepts introduced in lecture and providing you with
hands-on experience collecting, analyzing, and interpreting behavioral data. Activities will
include experiments involving live animals, field collection of behavioral data, computer
simulations, and game playing.
Prerequisites: Current enrollment in or successful prior completion of Animal Behavior (Biol
348).
Grading:
Participation (40%) Your presence and engagement in lab activities is crucial to the
success of this course, and your grade is weighted to emphasize this fact. The participation
component of your grade is based on satisfactory completion of worksheets that you turn in
before you leave the lab, participation in the Franklin Park Zoo field trip (including
successful completion of the associated assignment), and constructive involvement in all
discussions and activities in the lab.
Lab reports (60%) Labs are designed to show you how the scientific process is applied to
understand animal behavior. To reflect this goal, each lab report will have the form of a
(brief) scientific paper with introduction, methods, results, and discussion. Every lab session
will have a lab report due the following week unless otherwise indicated in the syllabus or in
class. A total of 11 labs will be completed during the duration of the course for which lab
reports are due the following week, excluding a make-up lab session at the end of the
semester and the introductory week. Participation and successful completion of all lab
sessions is mandatory; however if only one lab is missed, students will be permitted to make
up this lab session in the final meeting of the semester. All lab reports have equal value
towards your final grade and no lab reports will be accepted from a student who did not
attend that lab session.
Attendance: You are expected to attend every lab. Lab reports will not be accepted for a lab you
did not attend. For those of you who encounter an unavoidable conflict during the semester, I
have scheduled a make-up lab during the final week. Note, however, that some labs cannot be
made up, and I may have to assign an alternative activity for that week.
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Biol 349: Animal Behavior Lab syllabus (Fall 2015)
Schedule:
**Some activities are conducted outdoors so the schedule is SUBJECT TO CHANGE**
Date
Sept. 3
Topic
Introduction: How to study
animal behavior.
Description
In this session, students will be introduced to the
scientific methodology & hypothesis testing
framework that is associated with the contemporary
study of animal behavior and will be used throughout
the class. No lab report.
Sept. 10 Observing and recording
behavior using ethograms.
In this lab, which is conducted in the field around
campus, students will systematically observe animals
and objectively describe what they do. The goals for
this lab are the following: (i) learn how to objectively
describe behavior; (ii) try out different sampling
strategies for observing & recording behavioral data;
(iii) construct quantitative summaries of behavior
called ‘ethograms’; and (iv) evaluate the advantages
and disadvantages of each sampling strategy.
Sept. 17 Animal foraging I: Food
availability vs. predation risk
in squirrel foraging behavior.
In this lab students will collect data in the field to test
the alternative hypotheses that wild grey squirrels
(Sciurus carolinensis) will forage to maximize caloric
gain or minimize predation risk. Concepts that are
explored with this lab include foraging strategy,
predation risk, habituation, and field-based hypothesis
testing.
Sept. 24 Animal foraging II: Optimal
foraging theory, exploring
‘your inner optimal forager.’
In this lab students ‘forage’ for different types of food
(candy & dried beans) in a patchy environment of the
lab. They then measure energy gain per unit time and
effort in different environments to understand key
concepts in optimal foraging theory. Primary
objectives of this lab include: (i) to learn about energy
return as a function of prey abundance; (ii) to generate
& interpret a functional response curve; and (iii) to
assess optimality of different, alternative foraging
strategies.
Oct. 1
In this lab students will learn about game theory
models that can be used to study and predict how
animal behaviors should evolve through time under
what is referred to as ‘frequency dependent selection’
– that is, natural selection that depends on what other
members of a population are doing. Specifically, the
lab focuses on a very important model in the evolution
Game theory: The hawkdove model.
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Biol 349: Animal Behavior Lab syllabus (Fall 2015)
of animal behavior, the so-called ‘hawk-dove model.’
Objectives of the lab include the following: (i) to learn
about game theory and its application to animal
behavior; (ii) to use the statistical software &
computing environment R to analyze & predict
population dynamics and evolution under various
flavors of the hawk-dove model; and (3) to explore
circumstances in which multiple competing behavioral
strategies may evolve to co-exist in a population
through time.
Oct. 8
Territoriality in crickets:
Territory-holders vs.
intruders.
In this lab students will explore territorial behavior in
male house crickets (Acheta domesticus) via a
manipulative experiment in which interactions are
staged between ‘resident’ crickets (i.e., territory
holders) and non-residents (‘intruders’). The
objectives of the lab include learning about
territoriality in animals generally, and then
understanding why animals may evolve to use
different behaviors in different circumstances.
Oct. 15
Finding your way:
Navigation and habitat
selection in pillbugs.
In this lab students conduct an experiment exploring
habitat preference, selection, and navigation in the
pillbug (a crustacean isopod, Armadillium vulgare).
The lab involves first observing movement behaviors
in pillbugs, and then manipulating their environment
to measure and experimentally test navigational
behavior in this species. Learning objectives include
learning about kinesis and taxis, as well as exploring
how & why animals choose where to live.
Oct. 22
Animal conflict: Body size
and fight escalation in
crayfish.
In this lab students explore the ‘rules’ of animal
conflict using the freshwater crayfish, Procambrus
clarkii. Students observe and record crayfish fighting
behavior, and test the hypothesis that assessment via
ritualized behavior is important in whether individuals
engage in fights over territory or resources. Major
learning objectives of this segment include
understanding the evolutionary benefit of ritualized
behavior, and learning how animals decide when, and
with whom, to fight.
Oct. 29
Pheromones and mating
behavior in crayfish.
In this lab, also conducted with crayfish (Procambrus
clarkii), students observe mating behavior, and then
experimentally test for a role of pheromones (chemical
signals) in eliciting mating in this species. Students
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Biol 349: Animal Behavior Lab syllabus (Fall 2015)
will learn about the role of behavior, and the
importance of chemical pheromones, in animal
mating.
Nov. 5
Mate choice: Female choice
in fiddler crabs.
This lab is conducted with the sand fiddler crab (Uca
pugilator), a sexually dimorphic crustacean in which
males possess one dramatically enlarged claw which
they use to advertise to females. In this lab, students
will observe male fiddler crabs and then conduct an
experiment to test the hypothesis that females prefer
males with larger claws or more vigorous displays.
Major learning objectives including a better
understanding of how sexual selection and female
choice can drive the evolution of both male
morphology and behavior in animals.
Nov. 12 Comparative analysis of
behavior: Evolution of visual
displays in Anolis lizards.
In this lab, students will use the R statistical software
to analyze an existing dataset for display behavior in
Caribbean lizards in the genus Anolis. They will test
the hypothesis that the visual ‘noise’ in an
environment can influence the rate and properties of
signal (display) evolution in animals. Learning
objectives include: (i) understanding how the
environment can affect the evolution of animal
communication; and (ii) learning how phylogenies and
the among-species comparative method can be used to
study the evolution of animal behaviors.
Nov. 19 Franklin Park Zoo field trip.
In this lab, students will explore the Franklin Park Zoo
on their own or in groups, make observations on
animals that they encounter, and then submit three
research questions inspired by their observations.
Students are encouraged specifically to make
observations on collective behavior (herding, flocking,
schooling), social behavior & group social structure,
parental care, mate choice, and animal behavior in
captivity. The objective of this lab is to help the
students understand how field observations (with the
zoo as a proxy) can be used to inspire genuine animal
behavior research questions that might be addressed
by future study in the laboratory or field. A secondary
objective that is achieved by giving students feedback
on their questions is to help students learn what kind
of questions can (& cannot) be used to generate
testable hypotheses that can be investigated using the
scientific method. No lab report due next week, but
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Biol 349: Animal Behavior Lab syllabus (Fall 2015)
questions due by the end of the day.
Dec. 3
Human behavior:
Pheromones, gender
recognition, and
attractiveness (aka. the
sweaty t-shirt experiment).
Dec. 10
Make up lab.
In this classic lab, students will first take home white
t-shirts which they sleep in for several nights prior to
the experiment. T-shirts are then sealed inside
impermeable plastic bags and marked with a number.
Students then sniff & score each bag based on the
offensiveness or attractiveness of the odor they detect.
The learning objective of the lab is to understand how
humans and other animals choose mates, and to better
appreciate how our evolutionary history influences
human behaviors even today in the modern world.
Accommodations:
The University of Massachusetts Boston is committed to providing reasonable academic
accommodations for all students with disabilities. This syllabus is available in alternate format
upon request. If you have a disability and feel you will need accommodations in this course,
please contact the Ross Center for Disability Services, Campus Center, Upper Level, Room 211
at 617-287-7430 (http://www.umb.edu/academics/vpass/disability/). After registration with the
Ross Center, a student should present and discuss the accommodations with the professor.
Although a student can request accommodations at any time, we recommend that students inform
the professor of the need for accommodations by the end of the Drop/Add period to ensure that
accommodations are available for the entirety of the course.
Academic support:
Information about tutoring and other services available to students and faculty through the Office
of Academic Support Programs can be found at the URL
(http://www.academicsupport.umb.edu/).
Code of conduct:
Students are required to adhere to the University Policy on Academic Standards and Cheating, to
the University Statement on Plagiarism and the Documentation of Written Work, and to the
Code of Student Conduct as delineated in the Catalog of Undergraduate Programs. The Code is
available online at: http://www.umb.edu/life_on_campus/policies/community/code.
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