What you will learn today… hopefully What is the driving force behind animal behavior? How does learning alter behavior?

What main idea are all these behaviors driven by? Taxis – oriented movement toward or away from a stimulus Parental care Mating behavior

Survival and Reproduction! Selection for individual survival and reproductive success can explain most behaviors.

Survival Foraging Benefit must be larger than the cost Ex. Northwestern crow and whelk

Survival Animals must balance the risk of predation with the need to feed Ex. seals

Sexual selection A form of natural selection in which differences in reproductive success among individuals are a consequence of differences in mating success. Mate Choice Ex. Peacock Male

But what about altruistic behavior?

Altruism Altruistic behavior – Behaving in ways that reduces individual fitness for the benefit of others (selflessness) Belding’s ground squirrel gives high pitched alarm call to warn others, increasing their risk of being seen by a predator

Altruism Mainly, only females give alarm calls More calls the more kin nearby Percent of genome that is similar ~50% sibling ~50% parent ~25% between niece/nephew ~12.5 between first cousins

Learning can alter behaviors Habituation - a loss of responsiveness to stimuli that convey little or no new information. Imprinting – the formation at a specific age of a behavioral response to an object or individual.

Learning can alter behaviors Spatial learning and cognitive maps

Learning can alter behaviors Associative learning – ex. Pavlov's dog experiment Coyote associates pain with a porcupine

Learning can alter behaviors Cognition, problem solving, and social learning

MIP On a scratch sheet of paper, write down what you think was the most important point of the lecture?