Week 2 Animal Behaviour Lecture 2.1: Nurture ... amazonaws com
Week 2 Animal Behaviour Lecture 2.1: Nurture Vs Nature Some birds make very impressive nests, eg. Birds taking advantage of spider silk.
How do animals know how to do this?
The cuckoo chick hatches before the other eggs usually, as it develops quickly; it then will throw out the other eggs, resulting in them perishing. This cannot be learnt from its parents, who will have migrated. The foster parent seems oblivious. The behaviour is stimulated by pressure on the chicks back, and can be demonstrated by touching their backs.
Lecture 2.2 Behavioural ‘phenotype’ There is also variation in behaviour, which is essential for evolution of behaviours, along with heritability.
Colonies vary tremendously in size. Is there a genetic predisposition for swallows to want to nest in small or large groups?
They also used cross-fostering in this study so that the offspring were not influenced by their parents’ behaviour. This is population specific.
E = environment
Differences in pulses between calls disappeared entirely; due to phenotypic plasticity. Ie- the behaviour was due to the environment.
G = Genetics
There is a much greater difference in these traits at different temperatures. Your conclusions would be very different if you only took a certain environment into account. Lecture 2.3: Learning behaviour
This crow learnt to bend a wire to retrieve food.
The scrub jay is a relative of the nutcracker but stores 1/5 as many seeds and is not as reliant on them. It should therefore not have as good of a spatial memory.
Changed experiment to birds having to remember colours instead of position.
Therefore nutcrackers aren’t just more intelligent. Why don’t all species develop good learning ability?
Fruit was altered to make sure the flies just didn’t prefer certain fruits. What are the restraints of evolution of behaviours?
There is therefore a negative correlation between learning capability and competitive ability- a trade off.
How do animals know how to do this?
The cuckoo chick hatches before the other eggs usually, as it develops quickly; it then will throw out the other eggs, resulting in them perishing. This cannot be learnt from its parents, who will have migrated. The foster parent seems oblivious. The behaviour is stimulated by pressure on the chicks back, and can be demonstrated by touching their backs.
Lecture 2.2 Behavioural ‘phenotype’ There is also variation in behaviour, which is essential for evolution of behaviours, along with heritability.
Colonies vary tremendously in size. Is there a genetic predisposition for swallows to want to nest in small or large groups?
They also used cross-fostering in this study so that the offspring were not influenced by their parents’ behaviour. This is population specific.
E = environment
Differences in pulses between calls disappeared entirely; due to phenotypic plasticity. Ie- the behaviour was due to the environment.
G = Genetics
There is a much greater difference in these traits at different temperatures. Your conclusions would be very different if you only took a certain environment into account. Lecture 2.3: Learning behaviour
This crow learnt to bend a wire to retrieve food.
The scrub jay is a relative of the nutcracker but stores 1/5 as many seeds and is not as reliant on them. It should therefore not have as good of a spatial memory.
Changed experiment to birds having to remember colours instead of position.
Therefore nutcrackers aren’t just more intelligent. Why don’t all species develop good learning ability?
Fruit was altered to make sure the flies just didn’t prefer certain fruits. What are the restraints of evolution of behaviours?
There is therefore a negative correlation between learning capability and competitive ability- a trade off.
