PSY 336, Ethology, Part 4 Page 1 of 10

PSY 336, Ethology, Part 4

Chapters 14-17

Chapter 14

Habitat Selection, Territoriality, and Migration, pages 448-479

  1. Definitions
  2. Home range: where an animal spends most of its time
  3. Core area
  4. Territory: an area that is both occupied and defended
  5. Nomads do not have a home range or territory.
  6. Migration: periodic long-distance movement from one region to another

Okavango delta in the Kalahari, male six-plumed bird of paradise

  1. Habitat choice
  2. The ideal free distribution (IFD) model and habitat choice
  3. Individuals settle in habitats in proportion to the resources available in each patch.
  4. The equilibrium proportion of individuals in Habitat1and Habitat2should be reached when R1/N1 = R2/N2

(Resources in habitat1divided by the Number of animals in habiatat1 equals the Resources in habitat2divided by the Number in habitat2)

  1. This is also known as the resource matching rule.
  1. The IFD model and foraging success
  2. six stickleback fish in a tank with two feeders Fig14.3AFig14.3BFig14.3C
  3. Mallard ducks in a pond were fed by two observers.
  4. The ducks distributed themselves in a ratio that matched the amount of food distributed. Fig14.4AFig14.4BFig14.5
  5. Avoidance of disease-filled habitats

Gray treefrogs avoided sites that had snails that were infected with parasites. Fig14.6AFig14.6BFig14.7

  1. Stress hormones and spatial memory in rats
  2. Rats learned in a water maze for eight trials Fig14.8a
  3. Then they were put into one of four groups.Fig14.8b
  4. Rats that were shocked 30 minutes before the test trial showed impaired memory.
  5. Rats that were injected with corticosterone 30 minutes before a trial were also impaired.
  1. Territoriality--the occupation and defense of particular area.
  2. Territoriality and learning
  3. Juvenile Anolis lizards preferred the territories that other lizards had chosen.
  4. Using the choice of others to determine the quality of a potential territory has been called “conspecific cueing.” Fig14.11
  5. Territory owners and satellites

Pied wagtails Fig14.13Fig14.14

  1. Territorial “dynasties”

Florida scrub jays have a territorial inheritance system that produces “family dynasties” with many helpers-at-the-nest.

  1. Conflict within family territories
  1. Migration
  2. Migration and navigation
  3. Monarch butterflies use the sun and their internal clock to fly to the mountains of central Mexico for Christmas.
  4. Page 468 says “even on their first migration.” It is always their first migration.
  5. Page 468 says “the clock-shifted monarchs acted as if it were six hours later.” It should say “earlier,” not “later.”

Fig14.17Fig14.19bird

  1. Indigo buntings can navigate by using the stars.
  2. Stephen Emlen built funnel-shaped test cages for the birds and put them in a planetarium. Fig14.21AFig14.21BFig14.22
  3. Earth’s magnetic field can be used for navigation.
  4. Magnets attached to pigeons can disorient them.
  5. Research on bobolinks showed the birds paid more attention to magnetic information than to visual information, both of which were manipulated by experimenters using a planetarium and Helmholtz coils.
  6. Recent research on European robins show a visual center in the brain (cluster N) and light sensing cells in the eye--not magnetic sensing cells in the beak--allow the songbirds to detect which direction is north and migrate correctly.

(Zapka, M., Heyers, D., Hein, C. M., Engels, S., Schneider, N.-L., Hans, J., …Mouritsen, H. [2009, October 29]. Visual but not trigeminal mediation of magnetic compass information in a migratory bird. Nature, 461, 1274-1277.)

  1. Heritability of migratory restlessness (zugunruhe)

German blackcap birds that were selectively bred for late onset of Zugunruhe were shown to have a heritability score of 0.72.

cataglyphis, death's head hawkmoth

  1. Migration and defense against prarsites
  2. Phylogeny and migratory behavior

Chapter 15: Aggression,

pages 480-509

  1. Fight or flight?

Agonistic display

  1. Game theory models of aggression
  2. The hawk-dove game
  3. This is not necessarily about birds.
  4. The hawk strategy is to fight to win; it will escalate the fight until it is injured or its opponent gives up.
  5. The dove strategy is to display a threat, but retreat and give up if its opponent escalates the fight.
  6. Table15.1
  7. Male speckled wood butterflies use a bourgeois strategy. That means the territory holder acts like a hawk and the intruder acts like a dove. Fig15.8
  8. Antibourgeois Mexican spiders Fig15.9
  9. The war of attrition model

The victor is the individual that display the longest.

  1. The sequential assessment model
  2. In the sequential assessment model, individuals assess their opponents fighting abilities.
  3. Individuals should begin with the least dangerous type of aggressive behavior and work up to more dangerous types.
  4. The more evenly matched two opponents are, the more phases of their fights they should go through.
  5. Evenly matched opponents engage in longer and more dangerous fights.

ibex, moose, Grant's gazelle

  1. Winner, Loser, Bystander, and Audience Effects
  2. Winner and loser effects
  3. Winners win more; losers lose more.
  4. Dugatkin showed that if only winner effects are operating, a linear dominance hierarchy emerges.
  5. If only loser effects are operating, a hierarchy is produced that has an alpha animal and others.
  6. Bystander effects
  7. The bystander might change its assessment of the fighters it observes.
  8. Also called the “eavesdropper effect.”
  9. Audience effects
  10. Fighters change their behavior if they are watched.
  11. In wild chimpanzees in a mildly aggressive encounter, “recruitment screams” by victims were not related to whether there was an audience.
  12. In a severely aggressive encounter, recruitment screams by victims were more common when the audience had a chimp of higher rank than aggressor. The higher rank individual could break up the fight. Fig15.19

Chapter 16

Play, pages 510-537

  1. Defining play
  2. Bekoff and Byres defined play as “all motor activity performed postnatally that appears to be purposeless, in which motor patterns from other contexts may often be used in modified forms and altered temporal sequencing. If the activity is directed toward another living being it is called social play” (Dugatkin, 2014, p. 514).
  3. Other investigators view it like pornography, they say “we cannot say exactly what it is, but we know it when we see it” (Dugatkin, 2014, p. 514).
  1. Types and functions of play
  2. Object play--centers on the use of inanimate objects. Fig16.3Fig16.4
  3. Object exploration appears first--What is this object?
  4. Then object play follows--What can I do with this object?
  5. Juvenile ravens appear to manipulate or play with everything when they first encounter them. Inedible items are soon ignored. Edible novel items are added to their list of foods. Fig16.5
  6. The play of young cheetahs seems to have little cost, but there are benefits of better hunting behavior.Fig16.6Table16.2
  7. Play activity gradually disappears as the cubs get older. Fig16.7
  8. Locomotor play (locomotor-rotational play)
  9. This might provide exercise and training for motor skills needed later in life.
  10. In rodents, primates, and ungulates it includes such actions as leaps, jumps, twists, shakes, whirls, and somersaults.
  11. There appears to be a correlation between the onset of play early in life and the changing of synapses in the cerebellum. The changes might be growing new synapses or pruning excess, nonfunctional synapses. Fig16.9miceFig16.9ratsFig16.9cats
  12. Social play--playing with others.
  13. Social play may have three functions:

a)It may lead to the formation of long-lasting social bonds.

b)It may promote and fine-tune physical skills, such as those needed for fighting, hunting, or mating.

c)It may aid in the development of cognitive skills.

  1. How do animals know when play is occurring? How do they communicate that to others?

a)Play markers (play signals) such as pawing or play bows of dogs Fig16.11aFig16.11b

b)vocalizations

c)“play face” of gorillas Fig16.12

d)role reversal or self-handicapping Fig16.13

e)If you “cheat” at play and hurt someone, then maybe no one will play with you anymore.

  1. A general theory for the function of play
  2. Marek Spinka and others hypothesize that the main function of play is to allow animals to develop the physical and psychological skills to handle unexpected events in which they experience a loss of control.
  3. For example, the loss of control and balance associated with being chased by predators or losing a fight may be dealt with more effectively if play allows animals to prepare for such events.
  4. Predictions:

a) The more an animal plays, then more an animal can handle unexpected events

b)Self-handicapping should be common in species that play.

c) Play should have a measurable effect on an animal's somatosensory, motor, and emotional centers.

d)Locomotor play should be most common in species that live in the most variable environments.

  1. Endocrinological and neurobiological bases of play
  2. Play fighting in young male rodents
  3. Play may serve as a mechanism for coping with stress during development.
  4. The same neurochemicals that are involved in play behavior (dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin) are also critical in animals' stress responses.
  5. Basis of sexual play in young Belding’s ground squirrels
  6. Females who were well fed engaged in more sexual play.Fig16.17
  7. Females who were given testosterone engaged in more sexual play. Fig16.18

Chapter 17

Animal Personalities, pages 538-563

  1. Personality differences are consistent long-term phenotypic behavioral differences among individuals.
  2. These might also be called coping styles, behavioral syndromes, or temperaments.
  3. for example, bold or inhibited
  4. cooperative or uncooperative
  5. aggressive or passive
  6. hawks or doves
  7. cooperators or defectors
  8. producers or scroungers
  1. Boldness and shyness
  2. Boldness is similar to sensation seeking.
  3. Zuckerman’s Sensation Seeking Scale
  4. Bold and shy pumpkinseeds
  5. Guppies, boldness, and predator inspection

Female guppies prefer males that were bold enough to inspect a predator. Fig17.9dFig17.9c

  1. Some case studies
  2. Hyena personalities Fig17.10
  3. Spotted hyena females hold the alpha status in the clan.
  4. Dominance is inherited maternally.
  5. Gosling ran a principal component statistical analysis to determine if certain traits grouped together.
  6. The five principal components were assertiveness, excitability, human-directed agreeableness, sociability, and curiosity.
  7. Similar major personality traits were found in rhesus monkeys and gorillas.
  8. Octopus and squid personalities
  9. A principal component analysis showed three components of red octopus personality. Fig17.11

a)Activity (active—inactive)

b)Reactivity (anxious—calm)

c)Avoidance (bold—inhibited) Table17.1

  1. These three components are quite similar to those found in human infant development and in rhesus monkeys.
  2. Principal component analysis has shown the dumpling squid has two personality traits (shy—bold) and (active—inactive).
  1. Ruff satellites Fig17.12
  2. In the ruff bird, there are two forms (morphs) of males. The “independent” males have dark plumage and actively guard an area within a lek from other independent males.
  3. The “satellite” males have lighter plumage, are smaller, and may temporarily share an independence’s spot on the lek.
  4. Females appear to prefer lek areas that contain both morphs.
  5. The two morphs may be considered to be two different types of ruff personality.
  6. Females from “independent” fathers display independent male-like behaviors when implanted with testosterone. Fig17.13
  7. In ruffs, the inheritance of different personality types can be a due to dominant and recessive genes.
  8. Natural selection and personality in great tit birds Fig17.14
  9. Great tits that are described as “fast” quickly approach new objects, are aggressive, explore new environments rapidly, continue with the same food searching pattern, and quickly approach members of the opposite sex.
  10. “Slow” great tits are slow to approach new objects, are nonaggressive, explore new environments slowly, vary their foraging pattern often, and are slow to approach members of the opposite sex. Fig17.15
  11. Pairs of fast-fast or slow-slow parents produced healthier chicks than fast-slow parents.
  12. Slow tits seem to learn better; they were more like producers. Fast tits were more like scroungers.
  13. Chimpanzee personalities and cultural transmission Fig17.16aFig17.16bFig17.16c
  1. Coping styles
  2. Proactive: active response (territorial control and aggression)Fig17.17a
  3. Reactive: conservation-withdrawal response (immobility and low levels of aggression)Fig17.17bTable17.2
  1. Applications of Animal Personality Research
  2. Predators and domesticated prey

If we knew the personality traits of “problem individuals” who are predators (they may be bolder), maybe we could help ranchers better.

  1. Guide dog personalities
  2. “General fearfulness” was the component that was the best predictor of which dog would pass the final guide dog exam.
  3. “General fearfulness” also has a strong genetic component.
  4. Labrador retrievers were the most easily trained to be guide dogs.
  5. German shepherds were the most difficult to train to be guide dogs. But their anxiety might make them good watchdogs.