Lecture 183 of 373: Behavior, Learning, Animal Cognition, Social Behavior, Kin and Group Selection (33 mins) | CUET (Common University Entrance Test) PG Zoology (SCQP28) | Complete Video Course 373 Lectures [222 hrs : 42 mins]

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An innate program for acquiring a specific behavior

Requires an appropriate stimulus during the critical period

Once acquired, the behavior is irreversible

Examples:

In the first two days of life, graylag goslings will accept any moving object as their mother for life. Even a real mother introduced after the critical period will be rejected

Salmon hatch in freshwater streams and migrate to the ocean to eat. When they are ready to mate, they return to their birthplace to breed, identifying the exact location of the stream. During early life, they imprint the odors of their birthplace

Behaviors acquired through a process of learning

Types of Behavioral Learning

Associative Learning

Habituation

Observational Learning

Insight

Associative: When an animal learns that two events are connected.

EX: Dog learns that the smell/sight of food leads to eating (they will then begin to salivate)

Types of Associative Learning

Classical Conditioning

Operant Conditioning

Spatial Learning

Insight: When an animal, exposed to a totally new situation and without prior experience or observation, performs a behavior that generates a desirable outcome. Ex chimpanzee

Observational learning: Occurs when animals copy

the behavior of another animal w/o any previous + reinforcement of the behavior

Example:

Japanese monkeys usually remove sand from food by brushing them with their hands. One monkey discovered that dipping food in water more easily rid the food of sand. Through observational learning, many of the other monkeys began to use water to clean their food.

Animal Cognition

A. The study of cognition connects nervous system function with behavior

B. Cognitive mechanisms and travel

Kinesis

Taxis

Use of landmarks

Cognitive maps

Migration – butterflies, whales, birds

How? Piloting

Orientation

Navigation

Social behavior and Sociobiology

Sociobiology places social behavior in an evolutionary context

Competitive Social Behaviors

Agonistic behavior

Dominance hierarchy

Territoriality

Natural selection favors mating behavior that maximizes quality or quantity of partners

Courtship

Mating Systems

Social interaction depends on diverse modes of communication

Animal signals and communication

Pheromones – moths

Honeybee dance

Altruistic behavior and inclusive fitness

Altruism

Hamilton՚s Rule and Kin Selection

Sociobiology and Human Culture

Agonistic behavior – a contest to determine which competitor gains access to resources (food, mates, etc.)

Dominance hierarchy - a linear social organization within a group.

The top ranked animals are assured access to resources. Low ranked animals do not waste energy or risk harm in combat.

Territory – a territory is an area an animal defends, keeping out members of their own kind (species). Territories are used for feeding, mating, and rearing young.

Rooted in the Latin word alter – meaning other

Altruism – means “living for others”

Key component – selflessness – an unselfish regard for the welfare of others

Altruism was ignored as an area of study in social psychology until the mid-20^th century even though Auguste Comte coined the term 100 years prior

Inclusive fitness - The total effect that an individual has on proliferating its genes by producing its own offspring and by providing aid that enables other close relatives to increase the production of their offspring

My inclusive fitness = my offspring + the offspring my close relatives are able to rear because of the support I provided.

Kin selection

For Darwin, the apparent existence of altruism presented a “special difficulty, which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to my whole theory. ”

However, he also suggested a solution — selection might favor traits that decreased the fitness of the actor if they increased the reproductive success of close relatives

This form of selection, which takes into account the fitness benefits to relatives is kin selection

Group Selection

This perspective argues that groups consisting of cooperative members are more likely to survive and pass on their genes than groups composed of selfish members

Hamilton

William Hamilton (1964) developed a genetic model showing that an altruistic allele could increase in frequency if the following condition is satisfied:

Br - C > 0

Where B is the benefit to the recipient and C is the cost to the actor, both being measured in units of surviving offspring, and r is the coefficient of relatedness (or relationship) between actor and recipient

Hamilton՚s rule (r × B > C) specifies the conditions under which reproductive altruism evolves.

B is the benefit (in number of offspring equivalents) gained by the recipient of the altruism.

C is the cost (in number of offspring equivalents) suffered by the donor while undertaking the altruistic behaviour, and r is the genetic relatedness of the altruist to the beneficiary.

Relatedness is the probability that a gene in the potential altruist is shared by the potential recipient of the altruistic behaviour.