1. Ecology
“Biological Systems interact and these systems and their interactions possess complex properties”

2. Introduction to Ecology
Ecology can be studied at a variety of levels…

3. Inheritance Influences Behavior
Behavior is any action that can be observed and described.
The nature versus nurture question asks to what extent both our genes (nature) and environmental influences (nurture) affect behavior.

4. Study: Love bird nest-making
How do love birds make nests?
Experimental Observations:
Fischer Lovebirds cut long strips leaves and carry the strips with their beaks
Peach-Faced lovebirds cut short strips of leaves and carry strips in back feathers
Hybrid lovebirds have difficulties because they cut medium sized strips and try unsuccessfully to carry strips in their back feathers
Conclusions??

5. Study: Garter Snake food preference
Coastal snakes typically eat slugs in the wild, eat slugs in the lab
Inland snakes typically eat frogs and fish, don’t eat slugs in the lab
Hybrid snakes have an intermediate incidence of “slug acceptance”
Tongue-flicking shows prey recognition
When newborns are presented with cotton swabs covered in slug juice, what happens?
Conclusions?

6. Study: Garter Snake food preference

7. Study: Human Twins
Twins separated at birth and throughout childhood often have similar food preferences, activity patterns, and select similar mates!
Conclusions?

8. Conclusions:
The studies on Love Birds, Garter Snakes, and Humans SUGGEST behavior has a genetic bases
Do these studies DEMONSTRATE that behavior has a genetic basis?

9. Study: Marine Snail and Egg laying behavior
After copulation, snails extrude long strings with more than a million eggs that are then put into the snails’ mouth, covered with mucus, and wound into an irregular mass that is attached to a rock
Researchers isolated gene for Egg Laying Hormone (ELH) and noticed that it forms a string of 271 amino acids while ELH only has 36 amino acids. The gene could be responsible for more than just ELH!
Conclusions?

10. Study: Maternal Behavior in Mice
Maternal instinct hard-wired?
Mice with gene fosB were found to actively synthesize a particular protein after childbirth
fosB mice were seen cuddling with their newborns
Mice without gene fosB did not have the protein
Mice without fosB did not
show maternal
nurturing behaviors
Conclusions?

11. Conclusions: Genetics do influence Behavior (“Nature”)
But what about Environment (“Nurture”)?

12. Environmental Impact on Behavior: Learning
Fixed action patterns (FAPs) were believed to be behaviors that were always performed the same way, and they were elicited by a sign stimulus.
Many behaviors formerly thought to be fixed action patterns are found to have developed after practice.
Learning is defined as a durable change in behavior brought about by experience.
Deer grazing on the side of a busy highway, oblivious to traffic, is an example of habituation.

13. Instinct and Learning
Laughing gull chicks beg food from parents by pecking at the parents’ beaks
Researchers tried to figure out if this behavior was pure instinct or also learned
The chicks first peck at any beak model; later they only peck at models resembling the parents.

14. Pecking behavior in gulls, FAP?

15. Imprinting
Imprinting, another form of learning, involves a sensitive period.
Chicks, ducklings, and goslings follow the first moving object they see after hatching (usually their mother).
A sensitive period is the only period during which a particular behavior such as imprinting, develops.

16. Associative Learning Classical Conditioning
If paired stimuli presented consistently to produce response, over time one stimulus alone will produce the desired response
This suggests that an organism can be trained (conditioned) to associate any response with any stimulus.
Unconditioned responses are those that occur naturally; conditioned responses are those that are learned.

18. Associative Learning Operant Conditioning
In operant conditioning, a stimulus-response connection is strengthened.
This resulted from reinforcing a particular behavior.
Skinner came up with Behaviorism based on his experiments that used operant conditioning

20. Orientation and Migration
Ability to navigate

21. Cognitive learning
Learning through observation, imitation, and insight
Insight learning: animal solves a problem it does not have experience with

22. Animal Communication
Communication is an action by a sender that influences the behavior of a receiver.
When the sender and receiver are members of the same species, signals will benefit both the sender and the receiver.

23. Animal Communication Chemical Communication
These signals are chemicals (e.g., pheromones, urine, and feces) and have the advantage of working both night and day.
A pheromone is a chemical released to cause a predictable reaction of another member of the same species.

24. Aphids responding to alarm pheromones

25. Auditory Communication
Advantages
Faster
Effective night and day
Modified by loudness, pattern, duration, and repetition

26. Whale Song

27. Visual Communication
Visually communicate intensions- no need for chemical signal
During the day
Fighting/Defense and Courtship Displays

28. Courtship display

29. Tactile Communication
When one animal touches another to impart information of some sort

30. Can Behavior Increase Fitness?
Behavioral Ecology assumes behavior is subject to natural selection i.e. really dangerous/stupid behavior will lead to less reproductive success
Examine:
Territoriality
Reproductive Strategies
Social Behavior/Society
Altruism

31. Territoriality: Increased Fitness?
Territory: animal’s home range
Territoriality: defending the home range
Defense could be dangerous if fighting occurs and certainly uses a lot of energy

32. Territoriality Increased Fitness
Territoriality Increased Fitness? Group territoriality and the benefits of sociality in the African lion, Panthera leo
38 years of data on 46 lion prides in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania
Observed effects of territoriality on fitness of both females and males
Say-Mean-Matter activity

35. Different Reproductive Strategies
Some animals, such as gibbons, are monogamous; they pair bond, and both male and female help with the rearing of the young.
Most other primates are polygamous; males monopolize multiple females.
A limited number of primates are polyandrous.
Tamarins live together in groups of one or more families in which one female mates with more than one male.

36. Monogamous: African Antelope
Polygamous: Hyenas (although
matriarchal)
Polyandrous: Bees with their
queen

37. Sexual Selection  Increased Fitness?
Sexual selection refers to adaptive changes in males and females that lead to an increased ability to secure a mate
In males, this may result in an increased ability to compete with other males for a mate.
Females may select a mate with the best fitness (ability to produce surviving offspring), thereby increasing her own fitness.

38. Societies  Increase Fitness?
Benefits: avoid predators, raise young, find food
Costs: disagreements, individuals may be disadvantaged because of their group affiliation, parasites/disease spread more effectively
Cost/Benefit analysis, is it worth it?

39. Altruism vs. Self Interest
Altruism: behavior that potentially decreases fitness of one individual while increasing another’s fitness
Inclusive fitness: fitness of individual and close relatives
Indirect vs. Direct selection
Reciprocal Altruism: short term sacrifice to potentially increase future reproductive success
Ex. Birds who help parents raise future generations

40. Foraging and Fitness
Foraging for food (gathering food) can obviously increase fitness
Benefitss during foraging behavior must outweigh risks
Optimal foraging model: natural selection will effect foraging behavior so it is as energetically efficient as possible

41. Foraging Example