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BIOL3207 M1-2
Animal Behaviour Modules 1-2
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| What is animal behaviour? | any internally coordinated, externally visible pattern of activity that responds to changing external or internal conditions (i.e. a stimulus) |
| What are Tinbergen's questions in regards to understanding animal behaviour? | how does it work? how does it develop? what is it for? how did it evolve? |
| What are Tinbergen's proximate questions? | questions we can answer that occur during the life of an individual; includes mechanisms (how does it work) and development (how does it develop) |
| What are Tinbergen's ultimate questions? | questions that are significant over many generations; includes function (what is it for?) and evolution (how did it evolve?) |
| What do male bowerbirds do? | attract mates by building a bower (NOT a nest) and decorates it with objects from around the forest; a well-constructed bower is crucial in gaining mates |
| What are some explanations for the proximate mechanisms of a bowerbird building a bower? | could be seasonal cues, hormonal cues during mating season; a sensory stimulus (e.g. seeing mates) could trigger males to build bowers |
| What are some explanations/questions to ask for the proximate development of a bowerbird building a bower? | when do they start building a bower (how mature do they have to be); are younger males watching older males; do the displays of adult males change/improve over time |
| What are some explanations/questions to ask for the ultimate function of a bowerbird building a bower? | does bower design increase chances of copulating with females; are multiple signals assessed by females before deciding which male to mate with |
| What are some explanations/questions to ask for the ultimate evolution of a bowerbird building a bower? | does bower design become more complex over time; are there some closely related birds that do not produce bowers, if so what do they do to display to females |
| What are the two types of behaviour? | instinctive/innate or learned |
| What are instinctual behaviours? | behaviours that are fully formed the first time they are exhibited; no learning required but can be affected and improved by learning |
| Example of an innate/instinctual behaviour | male sticklebacks instinctually respond aggressively to the colour red as other males have red bellies and aggression is effective during the mating season |
| What is learning? | a process by which animals modify their behavioural, or adapt to their environment, in ways that allow them to experience increased fitness |
| What are the main reason why learning occurs in animals? | the environment in which the animal lives is often complex and unpredictable |
| How does learning allow animals to adapt to their environment? | learning is associated with neurological changes including memory formation; animals learn associations between stimuli and responses; social interactions facilitate learning; particularly useful for long-lived animals |
| What is the episodic memory? | part of conscious processes; past personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place |
| What is the semantic memory? | part of conscious processes; world knowledge accumulated throughout life (e.g. human names of colours) |
| What is the procedural memory? | part of the unconscious processes; part of long term memory responsible for knowing how to do things, a.k.a. motor skills (e.g. walking, talking, riding a bike) |
| What are the five main types of learning? | habituation, imprinting, associative learning (conditioning), spatial learning, social learning |
| What is habituation? | the reduction then lack of response to stimulus overtime; important in filtering less important information; functions at the level of the receptor or within the central nervous system; involves a decrease in neurotransmitter release (synaptic depression) |
| What are the fitness advantages of habituation? | allows the animal to focus attention and energy on important aspects of the environment; ignore background 'noise', avoiding disruption to behaviour; recognising false positives is an economy of response and therefore energy sabing |
| What is imprinting? | rapid learning that occurs in young animals during a short, sensitive period and has long-lasting effects; can be filial imprinting or sexual imprinting |
| What is filial imprinting? | in which a young animal imprints on an object (typically a parent) directly after birth; imprint on their parents and then follow them around |
| What are the advantages of filial imprinting? | enhanced survival; efficient learning; species recognition; parental investment maximisation; navigation and honing; reduced risk of abandonment |
| What are the disadvantages of filial imprinting? | misimprinting risks; limited flexibility; increased vulnerability; potential for human dependency; risk of parental loss; imprinting on inanimate objects |
| What is sexual imprinting? | the means by which a young birds learn species-specific characteristics that enables it to find a conspecific mate when adult; widespread |
| What are the two stages in sexual imprinting? | acquisition phase (social bond formed with parents - preference for parents' species formed during sensitive period); consolidation phase (occurs during courting - social preference linked to sexual behaviour) |
| What is associative learning (conditioning)? | the building of a learned association between two events; involves the association of certain conditions or actions with certain outcomes; enables animals to behave efficiently; two types, classical and operant |
| What is classical conditioning? | Pavlovian conditioning; learning new associations between a stimulus and an innate or unlearned response; two stimuli linked together to produce a new learned response (e.g. Pavlov's dogs) |
| What are the stages of classical conditioning? | before conditioning, during conditioning, after conditioning |
| What happens before conditioning (classical conditioning)? | the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) produces an unconditioned response (UCR); e.g. when a dog sees food (UCS) it begins to salivate (UCR) |
| What happens during conditioning (classical conditioning)? | a neutral stimulus which usually produces no response is associated with the unconditioned stimulus, and then becomes the conditioned stimulus (CS); e.g. a bell is rung when the food is presented so the dog associates the bell with food |
| What happens after conditioning (classical conditioning)? | the conditioned stimulus (CS) has been associated with the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) to create a new conditioned response (CS) |
| What is conditioned taste aversion (CTA)? | considered a special form of classical conditioning; occurs when an animal acquires an aversion to the taste of a certain food after it has been paired with aversive stimuli |
| What is operant conditioning? | a sequences of behaviour is associated with an outcome; the pairing of the behaviour and reinforcer/punishment is essential for learning; learning through trial and error |
| What is a reinforcer in operant conditioning? | a stimulus that increases the likelihood of a behaviour being performed; can be positive (due to the presence of a stimulus, e.g. food) or negative (due to the removal of a stimulus, e.g. pain) |
| What is a punishment in operant conditioning? | a stimulus that decreases the likelihood of a behaviour being performed; can be positive (due to the presence of a stimulus, e.g. electric shock) or negative (due to the removal of a stimulus, e.g. removal of food) |
| What is a learning curve and what does it show? | shows a measure of performance; steep learning curve means a lot is learned quickly; flat means it is difficult to modify the behaviour with learning |
| What are the advantages of operant conditioning? | fundamental method of problem-solving and gaining knowledge; helps overcome variation in environment, including geographic and seasonal; learning takes time |
| What is spatial learning? | process by which an organism acquires a mental representation of its environment; found in both vertebrates (e.g. rodents hoarding food in locations hidden from site) and invertebrates (e.g. wasps finding their nest) |
| What is social learning? | in social species, other individuals are a source of information for learning; can be selected for when it reduces the time and energy costs of learning; classified as horizontal (across group or individuals of same age) or vertical (through generations) |
| What are the two main types of social learning? | local enhancement (direction of an individual's focus to a particular part of the environment by the presence of another) and public info (info obtained from activity or performance of others about the quality of an environmental parameter or resource) |
| What are the advantages of learning? | allows more effective utilisation of unpredictable and complex environments; generalists can specialise; energy saving on responses; decreased 'distraction' by stimuli; decreased time to find 'reward'; decreased exposure to harmful experiences |
| What are the disadvantages of learning? | requires experience; takes time (learning curve); can involve exposure to bad experiences; compare with specialists that use innate behaviour |
| What is teaching? | a type of social learning; active participation of an experienced individual in facilitating the learning of a naive individual |
| What is the criteria of teaching? | the teacher modifies its behaviour only in the presence of the pupil; the behaviour is costly to the teacher; the pupil acquires knowledge or skill more rapidly due to the behaviour of the teacher |
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tkeen40
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