Animal Behavior

What is behaviour?
Behaviour is action that alters the relationship between an organism and its environment. Behaviour may occur as a result of:
An external stimulus (e.g. sight of predator) Internal stimulus (e.g. hunger) A mixture of the two (e.g. mating behaviour)

Two types of Behaviour

Innate behaviour: includes reflexes and instincts. It is determined by the hard-wiring of the nervous system and genes. Innate behaviour develops regardless of the environmental context. Learned behaviour: Behavior that develops as a result of experience.

Innate Behaviors
Reflexes (previously covered) Taxis Kinesis Instincts

Taxis
A taxis is an innate directional response to a stimuli.
A positive taxis means that the organism moves towards the stimulus A negative taxis means that the organism moves away from the stimulus.

Taxis Examples
Thermotaxis: movement in response to temperatures. (positive thermotaxis moves towards warm temperatures, negative thermotaxis moves away) Chemotaxis: movement in response to chemicals such as food, toxins, acids, etc. Phototaxis: movement in response to light.

Kinesis
An innate non-directional response to a stimulus.
E.g. speed of movement altered as a response to a stimulus. Rate of turning altered as a response to a stimulus.

Instinct
Complex behaviour patterns that are inborn, relatively inflexible, and valuable at adapting the animal to its environment. Instincts are a result of natural selection the behaviors that produce best survival in a response to a given stimulus, are likely to persist and be passed down to offspring. There is a large genetic component to instinctual behaviour.

Instinct and Natural Selection

Natural selection: organisms that are better adapted to their environment tend to survive and produce more offspring. It operates on both physical traits and behaviours In order for natural selection to operate, there must be more than one variant of a behavior.

Examples of Natural Selection on Instinctual Behaviors

Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla) migration changes
- Chicks hatch in Germany. The normal migration pattern is to fly to Spain in winter. Some chicks however, flew to England instead. - The advantage of flying to England is that it is a shorter distance, and food is plentiful due to bird feeders. Birds that flew to England returned earlier to Germany to breed and were more reproductively successful. The genes for migrating to England were then passed onto their offspring. - The two types of birds no longer interbreed because of different return times to the nesting grounds. This has resulted in genetic and morphological differences between the two populations. Hatchings from the England migrating birds innately fly to England in the winter, and the same is true of the birds that fly to Spain.

Examples of Natural Selection on Instinctual Behaviours

Garter snakes (Thamnophis elegans)
Coastal snakes diet includes amphibians and the banana slug Inland snakes diet is mainly composed of frog, leech, and fish (no slugs) Pregnant snake from the two regions were collected. Inland and coastal animals were isolated from each other. The hatchings are offered Banana slug food over a 10 day period.

Examples of Natural Selection on Instinctual Behaviours

Garter snakes (Thamnophis elegans)
60% of the coastal snakes eat the slugs but only 20% of the inland ones do. Conclusion the eating behaviour is genetically based