PSYC1617
- Created by: EvaFreegard
- Created on: 30-05-17 12:42
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- Exploring Animal Behaviour
- Lecture 1 EAB Origins
- Origins
- Hunters and prey in cave paintings (c35,000 ya)
- Farming and domestication (c10,000ya)
- Philosophy
- 1. Humans apart from nature- "gap"
- 2. Humans are a part of nature- "continuity"
- Natural History
- Monks/Clerics manuscripts with flora and fauna
- 17th century it became a recognised subject
- 19th century observation no framework (Darwin provided this)
- Charles Darwin
- Origin of species 1859, Descent of Man 1871, Expression of emotions in man and animals 1872
- Evolutionary theory provided strong case for continuity
- Evolution discussed by Aristotle ''scala naturae" and by Lamarck
- HMS Beagle
- Natural selection must be heritable, have a stable population, compe***ion, have more offspring than survive and inherit traits
- Neo-Darwinism added theory of genetic (Mendel)
- 21st Century
- Animal psychology
- Lab based
- Tightly controlled
- White rat
- Artificial
- Emphasis on learning via experience
- Ethology
- Field based
- Diverse species
- Behaviours
- Observation and description
- Focus on inherited behaviours
- Sociobiology
- hypothesis testing on evolution of social behaviour
- originates in the mid 1970s and is driven by Darwin
- Hypothesis tests using field observation and experiments
- Diverse species
- Animal psychology
- Importance of the question
- Tindenberg's 4 question
- Causation, development, function and evolution
- Edward Wilson: proximate vs ultimate
- John Alcock 1998: Proximate= causation and development (how?) Ultimate= function and evolution (why?)
- Nature vs Nurture debate
- Tindenberg's 4 question
- Origins
- Lecture 2 Learning (non-associative)
- Change in behaviour as a result of experience needed for adaptive behaviour
- Types of learning
- Non-associative (Habituation or Sensitisation)
- Associative learning (Pavlovian and instrumental)
- Other forms (spatial and perceptual)
- Aplysia (Sea Slug) crucial for simple learning
- Habituation
- Response greater the 1st time and then lessens
- Shown in gill stimulation
- Sensitisation
- Increased response to stimulus
- Shown in stronger responses when shocks increase in size and duration to the tail
- Pavlovian conditioning
- Pavlov's dogs= NS is the metronome, US food, CS metronome leads to salivation
- Fear conditioning is measure by body freezing, conditioned suppression, fear potentiated startle, heart rate
- LiCl injection induce vomiting for taste aversion
- Conditions for learning
- US must be surprising or blocking will occur (snails)
- CS must be novel (latent inhibition)
- Overshadowing shows that it is better for stimuli to be separate (planarium)
- CS-US Contingency (rats getting shocked)
- Biological preparedness shows some associations are easier to make ('noisy flavoured water')
- Lecture 3 Instrumental Learning
- Prediction and control are needed for successful adaption
- Action is instrumental in causing an outcome
- Thorndike's Law of Effect:
- Association between stimulus and response strengthened by presentation of a reinforcer
- No encoding
- Habitual
- Tolman
- Animals have an encoding of the outcome and is desired by a value
- Instrumental vs. Pavlovian
- Hershberger
- Chick runs down a runway to get food
- In instrumental the action of running gives food
- In Pavlovian the bowl is associated with the food
- When there are mirrors there is no instrumental relationship between action and outcome as the chicks do not run away
- Grindley
- Guinea pigs turning left/right when the buzzer sounds to get food
- Reversal showed they could still perform so must be pavlovian
- Free operant lever pressing shows instrumental
- Appetative event is reinforcement
- Omission is negative punishment
- Aversion is punishment
- Escape avoidance is negative reinforcement
- Hershberger
- Difference between SR and cognitive account
- Change reward value
- Adams and Dickinsons
- 1 press means food
- 2 presses means no food
- Animals are sensitive to learning consquences as behaviour changes depending on the consequences
- Supports instrumental action
- Training means habitual behaviour (SR)
- Fewer training succeptable to devaluation so there is a habitual and an encoding pathway
- Spatial learning
- Hippocampus
- When starting point is changed if it is the SR they will turn left, if it is the place it will go to the right location
- SR and ** both happen depending on the circumstance
- Claudate Nucleus important for automatic learning
- Evidence for cognitive map- little evidence
- Path integreation (dead reckoning) in ants use the quickest route
- Landmarks shown in with pine cones
- Intra/Extra maze cues cause blocking so are no different to regular cues so follow basic associative learning rules
- Lecture 4 Instincts and Learning
- Instinct is innate so it is inflexible and not easily changed
- Learning is the reaction to the environment so is flexible and not inherited
- Cross reared Galahs
- Galahs and pink cockatoos lay eggs together
- Pink Cockatoos are larger and more aggressive so drive Galahs away
- Pink cockatoos hatch and rear the Galahs along with their own
- Instinct shown in begging and alarm calls
- Learned behaviour shown in contact calls, slow wing bats and food preference
- Fixed action patterns
- Once they've started they must carry on the sequence
- Activated by sign stimuli and innate releasing mechanisms
- If goose egg rolls the goose taps it back on line and doesn't respond to the environment
- Sign stimuli (Tindenberg 1951)
- Sticklebacks do mating dance to red post van show aggression to rival males (position and colour is key)
- Chicks give contact call when separated from their mothers, when put in glass tube the mother doesn't retrieve them
- Chicks tap lower mandible to get food (red is key)
- Simple Learning
- Digging wasps make their nests surrounded by pine cones and will go where the pine cones are moved
- Sooty Tern will return to the place they laid the egg even if the egg has been moved
- Thynnine wasps attracted to orchid that mimics the female pheromone so are pollinated
- Innate Releasing Mechanisms
- Combination of stimuli
- Young goslings reaction to silhouette shows shape and movement responsible for fear
- Reed Warblers see young begging as a sign stimuli so will feed cuckoos
- Bird feeding goldfish with mouths open
- IRMs in humans
- FAPs continue once activated
- Yawning is contagious
- Response to human babies
- Babies sucking, grasping and rooting
- Babies up to 6 months can swim
- Code braking in Rove Beetles by tapping ants mouth parts to start FAP
- Lecture 5 Organisation of Behaviour
- Army ants act as one organism
- Hunting in snakes uses heat, taste and touch but they may be independent
- Preying Mantis
- Simple CNS with excitatory link sending messages to the 1st thoracic ganglion and abdominal ganglion
- If inhibitory connections are cut, it sends excitatory messages immediately so several actions happen at once
- Cycles
- Circadian Cycles (Crickets)
- have internal mechanism and needs environmental cue
- When the optic nerve is cut there is complete breakdown of patterns (internal pacemaker)
- When retinas are cleaved the cheeping time drifts
- Lunar cycles
- Kangeroo rats will only hunt in the full moon if the food is scarce
- Yearly cycles
- As animals come out of hibernation, respiration and brain activity increases and core starts to warm (process)
- When blinded after a number of years the hibernation period drifts
- Reproductive cycles
- In mice males will kill pups that aren't theirs
- Lizards have a hemipenis giving prostoglandin release
- Circadian Cycles (Crickets)
- Lecture 6 Habitat Selection
- Territory size is determined by food availability
- Prior residence effect is the best predictor of territorial success shown in white and black butterflies
- Dispersal occurs to avoid inbreeding or mate compe***ion
- Blue **** like oak foliage and Coal **** like pine, oak leaves fall so blue **** can forage on the ground
- Aphids form galls to protect young, those nearer the tree on bigger leaves have more sap and are more successful
- Prior residence effect
- territory holder will usually win and can preserve life
- Shown in white and black butterflies
- Hummingbird territory has calorific benefits
- Only beneficial if there isn't excess food
- When Blue *** territory holder is captured a new bird will take over and dynamics change
- Territorial size changes in accordance to food availability and intruder pressure
- Northern Harriers have smaller territories when food is plentiful, larger territories have fewer mice but intruder pressure still a factor
- Dispersal
- Vervet monkeys don't move around much as those that do are likely to disappear i unfamiliar territory
- Bolding's ground squirrel have males that disperse and females that stay avoid interbreeding
- Male Serengeti lions use infanticide but females are the heart of the pride to avoid mate compe***ion
- Lecture 7 Migration
- Due to the Earth's tilt causing seasons and is response to environment
- Migration towards rich food sources and reproductive purposes
- Uses clocks and compasses
- Stay strategy
- Retains occupation of territory but needs energy to defend it and risk of injury
- Avoid energetic costs of moving
- Avoid exposure to environmental or predatory risk
- Food and fat stores may not last
- Extreme weather may not be survivable and there are less opportunities for reproduction
- Deer mice breeding shows it changes due to the environment (desert breed in winter)
- Lactational barrier must be reached as it is the most costly part of pregnancy
- Hibernation
- Reduced need for food
- Global warming issues
- Migration
- Arctic Terns move to plentiful plankton
- Monarch butterflies use 3/4 generations with one super generation and they follow the cyanide mil weed
- Mostly south to north
- Green turtles return to natal beach
- Grey Whales live in cold water to feed but calves don't have blubber so go to warm, coastal areas for protection
- Navigation
- Piloting
- Noting the next land mark you see (using landscape)
- Shown in dolphins using peaks and troughs
- Compasses
- North magnetic feild
- Evidence for pigeons, eels and sock eye salmon
- Dead Reckoning
- Compass (direction) and Clock (duration)
- Celestial Compass
- Follow the sun and adjust pathway to time of day
- Clock and compass needed
- Marine animals use it (snell's window)
- Dung beetles use stars
- Star compasses in birds
- Move in the direction of a particular star
- Must adjust compass to la***ude and rotation
- Information from other sense organs
- Mechanoreception
- Chemoreception
- Thermoreception
- Electroreception
- Magnetic forces
- Gravitational forces
- Piloting
- Lecture 8 Anti predator defence behaviour
- Crypsis
- Not being seen
- Shown in young grasshoppers, thorn bugs, tree hoppers and salt and pepper moths
- Mimicry
- Pretending to be something else
- Shown in moth caterpillars being snakes, moths with pseudo heads and ground nesting owls with rattle snake noises
- Rattlesnake sound shows effect on coastal squirrels but not Davis
- Warning
- Show that they are dangerous
- Paper wasps (black and yellow), fire bellied toads (orange and black)
- Lyacid bug killed less when warning coloured over cryptic
- Batesian mimicry when they show warning but aren't dangerous
- Behavioural strategies
- Broken wing displays in Plovers
- Vervet monkeys have different warning calls for predators
- Unprofibility
- Signal they are not worth attacking shown in stotting deer
- Vigelence
- Increase distance from predator
- Always someone watching the predator
- Constant vigelence
- Removal of proximity
- Defence aggression
- Physical escape strategies (protean behaviour and death feigning) e.g. wilderbeast zigzags and possums play dead
- Owl calls shows period after call is the time to take precaution in doormice
- Crypsis
- Lecture 9 Sociobiology (Altruism)
- Advantages of society
- Mating/care of young (contact kin availability)
- Protection against predators
- Foraging/ cooperative hunting (info and prey size)
- Manipulation of the environment (burrows and hives)
- Division of labour (specialisation)
- Cultural transmission (vicarious learning)
- Altruism
- Putting yourself at risk to help another but personal risk implied reduced fitness
- Evolutionary theory would predict altruism should be selected against in favour of selfishness
- V.C Wynne Edwards (1962)
- Animal dispersal and its relation to social behaviour
- Over exploitation avoided through birth regulation
- Shown by
- Capable of producing more offspring
- Social subordinates not reproducing
- Breeding is delayed
- Long intervals between breeding
- Consuming own offspring
- Behaviour benefits the group "group selection theory"
- Uses epideitic displays to get info on population density
- Problems
- How the gene survives when representation is reduced
- Self sacrifice is not evolutionary sustainable
- Kin Selection theory (Hamilton 1964)
- Concerns for those with shared genes
- Inclusive fitness= direct fitness+indirect fitness
- Ground squirrel alarm calls (females closely related)
- Altruistic behaviour selected if K>1/r
- Young birds help rear future siblings and produce just as much as the parents
- Favouring helping behaviour selected if H>S (HxrH>SxrS)
- Seychelles warbler (Jon Komodeur)
- Removing helper leads to breeding success falling
- Young living with step parents gave less assitance to half siblings and non to unrelated
- Helping experiences influences future parental success
- Young that inherit parental territory do better
- Young will breed if possible and help if not
- More likely to help if parental territory is quality
- Eusocial insects (Trivers and Hare)
- Females forgo reproduction to work for mother
- Males are haploid (unfertilized egg)
- Average relatedness 75%
- 3x amount of food given to females
- Accounts for 'kamikazee bees'
- Advantages of society
- Lecture 10 Sociobiology (mate selection)
- Reproductive decisions
- How? When? With whom? Which social system?
- How? can be costly, exposure to danger, desertion, cuckoldry (benefits must outweigh costs)
- With whom? associated behaviour patterns vivid, stereotyped and species specific characteristics give genetic control
- Reproductive isolating mechanisms
- Premating mechanisms
- Mating related mechanisms
- Post mating mechanisms
- Courtship
- Transmit unambiguous signal (advertisor)
- Act on message (Selector)
- 'Advertisers' selected for salesmanship and 'Selectors' selected for for sales resistance
- Most males are advertisers as they have less to invest
- Anisogomy shows females have few, large ova and males have many small sperm
- Investment differential suggests female birds and mammals have more to invest
- Functions of courtship
- classically: attraction, overcoming fear of close contact, maintain bond
- 4th one is to evaluate potential mates
- Mate attractiveness
- Male finches with white head and crest feathers
- Male widow birds with long tails
- Peacocks with lots of spots on the lower edge
- Cuckoldry
- Refuse to mate with suspected inceminated female
- Protect the female, use plugs, repellents
- Darwin Mate Selection
- Intrasexual is beween males
- Intersexual is the efficiency to females
- Parental Investment (Trivers)
- Increase offspring survival rate at the cost of the parents
- More female investment and maximum net offspring is lower
- Females stop reproduction earlier
- Mating systems
- Monogamy
- Polygamy (polygyny/polyandry)
- Promiscuity
- Promiscuity has direct and indirect female gain (genes and resources)
- Subordinate gain is inclusive fitness and deferred fitness
- Reproductive decisions
- Lecture 11 Sociobiology (Aggression)
- John Archer 1988: compe***ive aggression, protective aggression, parental aggression
- Fight for limited resources shown in human tribes and sea anemones
- Forms of compe***ion
- Scramble compe***ion
- Contest compe***ion
- Shown in roaring red deers
- When to be aggressive
- Dominance relations
- Access to mates
- food, sleeping places, territory, nest sites
- Rhesus monkeys scramble until humans feed
- When not to be aggressive
- Resources are abundant
- Population density is low
- Lack of physical maturity, relevant experience or social subordinate
- Social stability means low aggression
- Sex differences in aggression
- Proximate explanation is testosterone
- Ultimate explanation is females are vital resources
- Theoretical view (Barash 1982)
- fighting to an optimum not a maximum
- After optimum the costs are higher than the gains
- Support in field studies rarely showing fatalities
- Proximate explanation is existence of elaborate displays to allow conflict resolution (ritualised attacks, submission and threat displays)
- Ultimate explanation is that beyond dominance there is little to gain and the animals can get resources without fighting so there are mutually accepted rules of combat
- Requirements
- Effective communication
- Unambiguous signals of compeition with vivid threat displays
- Unambiguous signals of submission
- Victory (testosterone) and defeat (cortisol) support physiological changes like hormones
- Aggression is highly adaptive
- Lecture 1 EAB Origins
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