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

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

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

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

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

6. 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

7. But what about altruistic behavior?

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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.

11. Learning can alter behaviors
Spatial learning and cognitive maps

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

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

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