Greg Detre
Monday, 01 October, 2001
1.
What is a
behavioural adaptation? What methods can be used to test adaptive hypotheses?
2.
Why has inclusive fitness been such an important concept in the study of
animal behaviour?
3.
What do
animals learn by imitating members of their own species?
4.
What is the
state of knowledge concerning the 'magnetic compass' in animals?
5.
What is
frequency dependent behaviour and what kinds of theories are used to understand
it?
6.
Discuss what is known about the significance of sensitivity to risk in
animal behaviour , in the sense of stochasticity , variance and uncertainty.
7.
To what extent
do Darwinian principles apply to human behaviour?
8.
Does
complexity of social behaviour imply complexity of cognitive abilities?
9.
What is the
value of comparing animals to robots?
10.
Under which
circumstances does infanticide occur?
11.
How would you
explain the evolution of conspicuous costly signals in animals?
12. Discuss the factors that influence mating systems in mammals and birds.
1. Are the theories about the adaptiveness of behaviour testable?
2. What is Hamilton's rule and why is it important?
3. Discuss the different reasons why so many animals form social groups.
4. In what sense do animals have maps?
5. Do animals deceive each other?
6. What exactly is meant by mate 'quality' and do sexual signals reveal it?
7. Can consciousness be investigated scientifically?
8. Is imitation a requisite for cultural transmission?
9. Why do people have children?
10. Discuss and illustrate with examples the use of optimality theory in animal behaviour, with special reference to how animals cope with unpredictable environments.
11. Does the behaviour of robots help us to explain the behaviour of animals?
12. Why be monogamous?
1. Discuss the various types of homing strategies that occur in the animal kingdom.
2. It is often said that for animal signals to be effective they must be reliable, and to be reliable they must impose a cost (A. Zahavi). Discuss this idea with examples from various taxa.
3. What are the costs and benefits derived from choosing a mate as opposed to mating randomly?
4. Write an essay examining the following quote: 'The main force shaping sociality in predators is their prey, and in prey it is their predators'.
5. How would you convince a sceptic that conservationists need to understand animal behaviour?
6. What is the relation between short-term optimality and long term fitness?
7. Write an essay examining the following quote: 'From pregnancy complications, to the stress response, to the beauty of symmetry, to the attraction of money, to the historical tendency of the rich to favour first-born sons, everything we think, feel and do might be better understood as a means to spread our own - or our ancestors' - genes'. (Laura Betzig, 1996).
8. What is the relationship between 'evolution', 'learning' and 'development' in the production of behaviour?
9. Why might it be useful for animals to be able to recognise kin?
10. What is evolutionary game theory? Explain the hawk-dove game and the prisoner's dilemma.
11. EITHER Critically assess the value of a consumer demand approach on animal welfare.
OR Why is measuring motivation important to animal welfare? How might motivation be measured?
12. Define and illustrate the concepts of 'Circadian Rhythms' and 'Interval Timing'.
SECTION A
1. What is a 'sign stimulus'? Give examples.
2. What is an Evolutionarily Stable Strategy?
3. What is an assessment display?
4. When there is uniparental care of offspring in fishes, the task frequently falls to the male. Why?
5. What is an 'intake target', and how might this be measured?
6. Give TWO examples in which single genes have been shown to affect behaviour.
7. Define ALL the following terms:
circadian rhythm
supernormal stimulus
teleology
behavioural threshold
SECTION B
1. Why and under what circumstances do animals form dominance hierarchies?
2. Why do animals give alarm signals?
3. Under what circumstances do animals not give honest signals?
4. A given species is reported to show 'helping at the nest'. How would you determine whether this behaviour evolved through kin selection or through its benefits to the individual helper?
5. Do an animal's choices tell us anything about its welfare?
6. Devise an experiment to determine whether a non-human animal has a concept of 'number'.
7. Are humans special?
8. Discuss the relationship between 'nature' and 'nurture' in bird song.
1. How do animals find their way?
2. Does game theory help us to understand the evolution of aggression?
3. Illustrate the relation between functional and mechanistic explanations of animal behaviour.
4. Need co-operation be altruistic?
5. Does it pay animals to communicate reliable information?
6. 'Animals are micro-economic machines'. Discuss.
7. How and why do the mating systems of birds and mammals differ?
8. Do animals measure time?
9. In what sense can non-human animals be said to have 'cultures'?
10. Discuss the contribution of optimality models to the understanding of animal behaviour.
11. What makes a female choose one male rather than another?
12. Are there aspects of human behaviour that can be seen as Darwinian adaptations?
consciousness
communication
cognitive
a-life
kin recognition/selection
social learning
optimality
R. Dawkins & Krebs (1978, 1984) in Behavioural Ecology (two editions have different versions) ed. by Krebs and Davies.
M. Dawkins & Guilford (1991) Anim. Behav. 41, 865-
Griffin,
D.R. (1992) Animal Minds Chicago Press (RSL open shelf)
J.R.Krebs and N.B.Davies - An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology
R.Dawkins - The Selfish Gene 2nd ed., The Extended Phenotype
Richard Byrne, The thinking ape � evolutionary history of intelligence
Marc Hauser, Wild minds
Tinbergen�s Four Why�s - where are we now?
Tinbergen, N.
(1963) On aims and methods in Ethology. Z. Tierpsychol. 20, 410-433.
Dawkins, M.S. (1989) The future of Ethology: how
many legs are we standing on? Persp. Ethol. 8, 47-54.
Dewsbury, D.A. (1992) On the problems studied in ethology, comparative psychology, and animal behaviour. Ethology 92, 89-107.
Discuss the evolution of �honesty� and �deceit� in animal
communication.
Wiley (1983) in Animal Behaviour ed,. by Halliday and Slater, Vol.2 Communication.
Axelrod & Hamilton (1981) Science 211, 1390-
R. Dawkins & Krebs (1978, 1984) in Behavioural Ecology (two editions have different versions) ed. by Krebs and Davies.
M. Dawkins & Guilford (1991) Anim. Behav. 41, 865-
Blumberg & Alberts (1992) Anim. Behav. 44, 382-
Dugatkin et al. (1992) Trends Ecol. Evol. 7, 202-
Noe (1990) Animal Behaviour 39, 78-90.
Are non-human animals conscious?
Dawkins,
M.S. (1993) Through Our Eyes Only. Freeman
Byrne,
R. (1995) The thinking ape: evolutionary origins of intelligence. O.U.P.
(Hooke, RSL main library)
Churchland,
P.M. (1995) The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul. M.I.T.
Press (CCC 612.8201Ch)
Griffin,
D.R. (1992) Animal Minds Chicago Press (RSL open shelf)
Kennedy,
J.S. (1992) The New Anthropomorphism CUP. (Hooke, RSL Stack)
Weiskrantz,
L. (1995) The problem of animal consciousness in relation to neurophysiology. Behav.
Brain Res. 71, 171-175.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=JournalURL&_issn=01664328_auth=y&acct=C000010360&_version=1&urlVersion=0&userid=126524&md5=00d2c0d3384311f4447732fd8fa76543)
Discuss the differences
and similarities between genetic algorithms and natural evolution.
Mitchell, M. 1998 An Introduction to Genetic Algorithms, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Levy, S. 1992. Artificial Life � The Quest for a New Creation, Penguin
Ridley, M. 1996. Evolution (2nd ed.), Blackwell Scientific, Oxford.
Anastasoff, S. 1999. Evolving Mutation Rates for the Self-Optimisation of Genetic Algorithms. In Advances in artificial life� : 5th� European Conference, ECAL'99, Lausanne, Switzerland, September, 1999 : proceedings, Floreano, D., Nicoud, J-D., Mondada, F. (eds.), pp. 74-78, Springer Verlag, Berlin.
Why and how do animals recognise their relatives?
see also: Steve Simpson�s reading list
J.R.Krebs and N.B.Davies - An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology
R.Dawkins - The Selfish Gene 2nd ed.
J.L.Hoogland (1983) Nepotism and alarm calling in the black-tailed Prairie dog. Animal Behaviour 31: p.472.
J.Jarvis (1994) Mammalian eusociality: a family affair. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 9(2): 47-51.
J.L.Brown & A.Eklund (1994) Kin recognition and the major histocompatibility complex: an integretarive review. American Naturalist 143: 435-461.
S. Lenington (1994) Of mice, men and the MHC. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 9(12)p. 455-456.
What cognitive abilities do
animals really have?
Do animals have a concept of
number?
Do animals have a theory of mind?
Marian Dawkins, Through our eyes only
Richard Byrne, The thinking ape � evolutionary history of intelligence
Marc Hauser, Wild minds
Gould & Gould, The animal mind
Hare et al. (2000), �Do chimpanzees know what conspecifics know?�
Povinelli et al. (2000), �Towards a science of other minds: escaping the argument from analogy�
Bloom & German (2000), �Two reasons to abandon the false belief task as a test of the theory of mind�
Daniel C. Dennett, �Do Animals Have Beliefs?�, in Herbert Roitblat, ed., Comparative Approaches to Cognitive Sciences, MIT Press, 1995.
Heyes, C. M. (1998). Theory of mind in nonhuman primates. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (1): 101-134.
Do animals behave optimally?
J.R.Krebs and A.Kacelnik (1991)� Decision-making.� In: 'Behavioural Ecology' ed. J.R.Krebs and N.B.Davies. 3rd ed. p.105-136
S.J.Gould and R.C.Lewontin (1979) The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm:� a critique of the adaptationist programme. Proc. Roy. Soc. Lond. B 205: p.581-598.� (Reprinted in 'The Evolution of Adaptation by Natural Selection' edited by J. Maynard Smith and M.Holliday).
M.Dawkins (1986) 'Unravelling Animal Behaviour' Chapter 2.
R.Dawkins (1982) 'The Extended Phenotype'� Chapter 3.
What do animals learn from each other?