Optimal Foraging
What behavior drives an individual towards a goal, such as hunger motivating an animal to search for food?
What is appetitive behavior?
What term describes the phenomenon where a harmless species imitates the warning signals of a harmful species?
What is Batesian mimicry?
What does it mean when an interaction is dyadic?
What is it involves two individuals?
What hormone is commonly known to stimulate hunger in humans and animals?
What is ghrelin?
Masquerade mimics appear as something uninteresting to avoid predation. But what type of predators might they still be vulnerable to?
What is predators that don't use vision as main sensory modality (e.g. bats)?
Why do frogs lunge at horizontal stimuli but not at vertical stimuli?
What is because horizontal stimuli trigger the optic tectum, causing a lunge, while vertical stimuli activate the thalamic pretectum, suppressing the response?
What kind of mimicry occurs when two harmful species resemble each other for mutual benefit?
What is Mullerian mimicry?
What are index signals?
Why do zebras have stripes?
What is something about zebra stripes makes them less attractive to tsetse flies than solid colours?
What is the difference between a signal and a cue?
Signal - behavior that evolved to manipulate behavior of a receiver
Cue - behavior that did not evolve to manipulate behavior of a receiver but does so anyway
What sensory adaptation allows pit vipers to detect prey by heat?
What is their pit organs, which detect heat and map it with their visual system?
Why might it be adaptive for caterpillars not to mimic a predator exactly?
What is to prevent predators from learning that they are harmless by avoiding a perfect resemblance?
What theory suggests that costly signals are more reliable indicators of genetic quality?
What is the Handicap Principle?
What is a supernormal stimulus in the context of animal behavior?
What is a stimulus that triggers a stronger than normal response, often due to exaggeration of certain traits?
How might signals be costly?
Might increase predation or parasitism, have developmental or energetic costs
When should an individual adopt a generalist foraging style?
What is when the encounter rate of the more profitable prey is low?
How does the signal detection theory explain why some bees fall for orchid mimicry?
What is because the cost of a missed opportunity is bigger than falling for a false alarm?
How do forest birds' calls differ from those of woodland species?
What is forest birds have lower frequency and more tonal calls, while woodland birds have more temporal patterning?
What is the significance of a "missed opportunity" versus a "false alarm" in the behavior of male bees?
What is missed opportunities are more costly because female bees are rare, so it's better to risk false alarms?
What are advantages of multimodal communication?
Increased perceived intensity, increased detection, increased selective attention, increased information
According to optimal foraging theory, why might an animal become a specialist instead of a generalist when foraging?
What is when the encounter rate with more profitable prey increases, profitability of prey increases, or handling time of prey decreases?
What advantage do Drongos have by using multiple alarm calls when deceiving other animals?
What is they avoid habituation, where their targets stop responding to repeated false alarms?
How do Túngara frogs use multimodal communication during mating calls?
What is they combine vocal calls with visual cues like water ripples and vocal sac inflation?
Provide 3 examples of functions of communication
What is parent-offspring communication, mate recognition, predator detection, aposematic warnings, territorial, agonistic?