Undergraduates: ZOO 4415, CRN 20662, Section 01
Graduate students: ZOO 5415, CRN 20663,
Section 01
Prerequisites: ZOO 3400 (Ecology) or ZOO 3600 (Animal Behavior) or permission from Dr. McDonald
Meeting time: MWF 10:00-10:50 Location TBA
Unlike some of my other courses, I am working mostly from WyoWeb course resources for this course. Lectures (Powerpoints) will be posted on the WyoWeb site, along with readings and other resources. This site is mostly designed to be a pointer to those resources.
How to gain access to required readings and other files
List of potential course topics
Goals: Why do animals behave in such a diversity of ways as they seek food, shelter or mates? This course provides a framework of theoretical and empirical approaches linking ecology, behavior and evolution. We will study the ecological factors, such as resource distribution, that underlie behaviors as diverse as foraging, predation, mating systems and herding. We will use comparative approaches to understand both pattern and process in behavior across a wide range of animal taxa. We will use cost/benefit approaches that quantify the genetic/fitness payoffs to behavioral patterns, as well as non-adaptive alternatives such as phylogenetic constraints. We will study examples of behavioral ecological patterns from current and past field studies and examine the theoretical (often-mathematical) principles useful in analyzing them. The course will emphasize the integration of evolutionary and ecological forces that shape the amazing diversity of behaviors in the animal kingdom.
Dr. David McDonald BioSciences 413 dbmcd@uwyo.edu 766-3012
Office hours W 10:00-12:00, Th 1:30-2:30, or by appointment Dave McDonald's web page
Two male Long-tailed Manakins (alpha and beta partners) doing a cartwheel dance display for females. A central question in my research has been to explore why unrelated males engage in this virtually unique form of cooperative courtship display. Publications available from my website-link above.
Tentative list of topics (this list differs from the one I put in the syllabus, but I decided to leave it here):
- The foundations of behavioral ecology: cost/benefit analyses, the “genetic accounting” of W.D. Hamilton’s theory of kin selection, the ecological basis of social systems (Crook; Orians; Emlen & Oring), E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology. Tinbergen's four questions -- mechanism, selective advantage, ontogeny and phylogeny.
- Kin selection and inclusive fitness
a) Eusocial insects, haplodiploidy, naked mole rats
b) Inclusive fitness benefits in other contexts
c) Kin recognition systems - Comparative approaches:
a) Phylogenetic constraints vs. rapid adaptation to ecological conditions
b) Phylogenetically independent contrasts
c) Character mapping
d) Heterochrony: baby-face, brains and bonobos - Optimality approaches
a) Optimal foraging; marginal value theorem
b) Habitat selection
c) Tradeoffs and bet-hedging - Competing for resources
a) Ideal free distribution and the economics of resource defense
b) Game theory: the wear of attrition and the concept of an ESS - Predator-prey interactions (emphasizing fitness payoffs rather than population dynamics)
a) Crypticity, aposematism and mimicry
b) Predator-prey arms races and the Red Queen hypothesis
c) Brood parasites and their hosts - Signaling systems
a) Receptors and receivers (UV, other sensory modalities)
b) Honest vs. deceptive signals -- why the motmot wags its tail
c) Status signaling -- how the sparrow got its spots - Living in groups
a) Flocking, herding: costs and benefits
b) Optimal group size
c) Queuing in manakins and hyenas - Sexual selection and mate choice
a) Anisogamy and Bateman’s principle
b) Competition for mates
c) Good genes vs. runaway sexual selection
d) Evolution of ornaments, condition-dependent traits, sensory bias
e) Sex ratio variations - Parental care
a) The temptation to desert
b) Uniparental and biparental care
c) Taxonomic patterns of parental care
d) Sexual conflict -- from genes on up - Mating systems
a) Monogamy, polygyny and polyandry
b) Extra-pair fertilizations (EPF, EPC, EPP)
c) Sperm competition
d) Non-resource-based mating systems: leks as a default strategy
e) Alternative mating strategies -- best of a bad lot vs. balanced payoffs - Cooperation and communal breeding
a) Reciprocity: game theory (tit-for-tat) and other approaches
b) Mutualism -- gimme shelter
c) Communal breeding: direct or indirect benefits? Helping can be selfish (scrub-wrens and meerkats).
d) Social network models -- how the alpha male got his spot - "Nothing in biology makes sense, except in the light of evolution"
a) Tinbergen's four questions revisited
b) Behavioral syndromes -- shy bird, bold bird, red bird, blue bird
c) Adaptive vs. nonadaptive explanations -- did the spandrels of San Marco develop just so the hyena could have a pseudopenis?
d) How come? Infanticide, cannibalism and other paradoxes. - Conservation and behavioral ecology
a) Good intentions, bad results --
Kakapos -- good food, bad sex. Wood Ducks -- don't put all your eggs in one basket
b) Ecological traps -- plowed fields and Mountain Plovers
c) Endocrine disruptors -- Lola the boy (?) alligator - Human behavioral ecology
a) MHC and mate choice
b) Evolutionary psychology
c) Left-handedness
d) E.O. Wilson’s Sociobiology revisited
Suggested text (not required):
Krebs JR, and N.B. Davies. 1993. An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology (3rd edn.). Blackwell Science, Oxford. (or any edition back to the 1981 1st edition will work fine)