How does learned behaviour benefit an organism

Additionally, in some animals, only a portion of the population migrates, whereas the rest does not migrate incomplete migration. For example, owls that live in the tundra may migrate in years when their food source, small rodents, is relatively scarce, but not migrate during the years when rodents are plentiful.

Animals communicate using signals, which can be chemical pheromones , aural sound , visual courtship displays , or tactile touch. Not all animals live in groups, but even those that live relatively-solitary lives with the exception of those that can reproduce asexually must mate. Mating usually involves one animal signaling another so as to communicate the desire to mate. There are several types of energy-intensive behaviors or displays associated with mating called mating rituals.

Other behaviors found in populations that live in groups are described in terms of which animal benefits from the behavior. All of these behaviors involve some sort of communication between population members. Animals communicate with each other using stimuli known as signals. These signals are chemical pheromones , aural sound , visual courtship and aggressive displays , or tactile touch.

These types of communication may be instinctual, learned, or a combination of both. These are not the same as the communication we associate with language, which has been observed only in humans and, perhaps, in some species of primates and cetaceans. A pheromone is a secreted, chemical signal used to obtain a response from another individual of the same species. The purpose of pheromones is to elicit a specific behavior from the receiving individual.

Pheromones are especially common among social insects, but they are used by many animal species to attract the opposite sex, to sound alarms, to mark food trails, and to elicit other, more-complex behaviors. Even humans are thought to respond to certain pheromones called axillary steroids. These chemicals influence human perception of other people. In one study, they were responsible for a group of women synchronizing their menstrual cycles. The role of pheromones in human-to-human communication is still somewhat controversial and continues to be researched.

Songs are an example of an aural signal: one that needs to be heard by the recipient. Perhaps the best known of these are songs of birds, which identify the species and are used to attract mates. Other well-known songs are those of whales, which are of such low frequency that they can travel long distances underwater.

Dolphins communicate with each other using a wide variety of vocalizations. Male crickets make chirping sounds using a specialized organ to attract a mate, repel other males, and to announce a successful mating. Courtship displays are a series of ritualized visual behaviors signals designed to attract and convince a member of the opposite sex to mate.

These displays are ubiquitous in the animal kingdom. They often involve a series of steps, including an initial display by one member followed by a response from the other. If at any point the display is performed incorrectly or a proper response is not given, the mating ritual is abandoned and the mating attempt will be unsuccessful. Aggressive displays are also common in the animal kingdom.

As, for example, when a dog bares its teeth to get another dog to back down. Presumably, these displays communicate not only the willingness of the animal to fight, but also its fighting ability.

Distraction displays are seen in birds and some fish. They are designed to attract a predator away from the nest that contains their young. This is an example of an altruistic behavior: it benefits the young more than the individual performing the display, which is putting itself at risk by doing so.

Many animals, especially primates, communicate with other members in the group through touch. Activities such as grooming, touching the shoulder or root of the tail, embracing, lip contact, and greeting ceremonies have all been observed in the Indian langur, an Old World monkey. Similar behaviors are found in other primates, especially in the great apes. Behaviors that lower the fitness of the individual engaging in the behavior, but increase the fitness of another individual, are termed altruistic.

Examples of such behaviors are seen widely across the animal kingdom. Social insects, such as worker bees, have no ability to reproduce, yet they maintain the queen so she can populate the hive with her offspring.

Meerkats keep a sentry standing guard to warn the rest of the colony about intruders, even though the sentry is putting itself at risk. Wolves and wild dogs bring meat to pack members not present during a hunt. Lemurs take care of infants unrelated to them. Note that this video has no narration. Behaviors that lower the fitness of the individual but increase the fitness of another individual are termed altruistic.

Examples of such behaviors are seen widely across the animal kingdom. Social insects such as worker bees have no ability to reproduce, yet they maintain the queen so she can populate the hive with her offspring. Meerkats keep a sentry standing guard to warn the rest of the colony about intruders, even though the sentry is putting itself at risk. Wolves and wild dogs bring meat to pack members not present during a hunt.

Lemurs take care of infants unrelated to them. Although on the surface, these behaviors appear to be altruistic, it may not be so simple. There has been much discussion over why altruistic behaviors exist. Do these behaviors lead to overall evolutionary advantages for their species? Do they help the altruistic individual pass on its own genes? And what about such activities between unrelated individuals? One explanation for altruistic-type behaviors is found in the genetics of natural selection.

In the book, The Selfish Gene, scientist Richard Dawkins attempted to explain many seemingly altruistic behaviors from the viewpoint of the gene itself. Although a gene obviously cannot be selfish in the human sense, it may appear that way if the sacrifice of an individual benefits related individuals that share genes that are identical by descent present in relatives because of common lineage.

Mammal parents make this sacrifice to take care of their offspring. Emperor penguins migrate miles in harsh conditions to bring food back for their young. Selfish gene theory has been controversial over the years and is still discussed among scientists in related fields. Even less-related individuals, those with less genetic identity than that shared by parent and offspring, benefit from seemingly altruistic behavior.

The activities of social insects such as bees, wasps, ants, and termites are good examples. Sterile workers in these societies take care of the queen because they are closely related to it, and as the queen has offspring, she is passing on genes from the workers indirectly. Thus, it is of fitness benefit for the worker to maintain the queen without having any direct chance of passing on its genes due to its sterility.

This phenomenon can explain many superficially altruistic behaviors seen in animals. However, these behaviors may not be truly defined as altruism in these cases because the actor is actually increasing its own fitness either directly through its own offspring or indirectly through the inclusive fitness it gains through relatives that share genes with it.

An example of this observed in many monkey species where a monkey will present its back to an unrelated monkey to have that individual pick the parasites from its fur. After a certain amount of time, the roles are reversed and the first monkey now grooms the second monkey. Thus, there is reciprocity in the behavior.

Both benefit from the interaction and their fitness is raised more than if neither cooperated nor if one cooperated and the other did not cooperate. Not all animals reproduce sexually, but many that do have the same challenge: they need to find a suitable mate and often have to compete with other individuals to obtain one.

Significant energy is spent in the process of locating, attracting, and mating with the sex partner. Two types of selection occur during this process and can lead to traits that are important to reproduction called secondary sexual characteristics: intersexual selection , the choosing of a mate where individuals of one sex choose mates of the other sex, and intrasexual selection , the competition for mates between species members of the same sex.

Intersexual selection is often complex because choosing a mate may be based on a variety of visual, aural, tactile, and chemical cues. An example of intersexual selection is when female peacocks choose to mate with the male with the brightest plumage. This type of selection often leads to traits in the chosen sex that do not enhance survival, but are those traits most attractive to the opposite sex often at the expense of survival. Intrasexual selection involves mating displays and aggressive mating rituals such as rams butting heads—the winner of these battles is the one that is able to mate.

Three general mating systems, all involving innate as opposed to learned behaviors, are seen in animal populations: monogamous, polygynous, and polyandrous. In monogamous systems, one male and one female are paired for at least one breeding season. In some animals, such as the gray wolf, these associations can last much longer, even a lifetime. Presentation is loading. Please wait.

Copy to clipboard. Presentation on theme: " a explain the advantages to organisms of innate behaviour;"— Presentation transcript: 1 a explain the advantages to organisms of innate behaviour; Chapter Behaviour Lesson Objectives: a explain the advantages to organisms of innate behaviour; b describe escape reflexes, taxes and kineses as examples of genetically-determined innate behaviours; 2 The study of behaviour — ethology!

Nevertheless, they invariably go through the motions of trying to tuck the materials in their feathers first 9 Reflex actions Rapid, automatic responses to stimuli In humans — does not involve conscious thought in animals it is impossible to tell if they have conscious thought! It is a response that — as a result of experience — comes to be caused by a stimulus different from the one that originally triggered it 18 19 Conditioning bees Honeybees can be conditioned to seek food on a piece of blue cardboard By offering other colors to a blue-conditioned bee, Karl von Frisch found that honeybees can discriminate between yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and UV After a period of feeding from a dish placed on blue cardboard, the bees return to an empty dish on a clean blue card.

They are able to distinguish the blue card from others of varying shades of gray 20 Other types of conditioning Pavlov's dogs were restrained and the response being conditioned salivation was innate. Download ppt " a explain the advantages to organisms of innate behaviour;".

Behavior Animal responds to stimuli Food odor Singing. About project SlidePlayer Terms of Service. Feedback Privacy Policy Feedback. All rights reserved. The list of known eusocial animals includes ants, termites, some wasps, some bees, a small number of aphid and thrip species, two species of mammal the naked mole rat and the Damaraland mole rat , and multiple species of reef-dwelling shrimp. How can selection produce an organism that has no chance of reproducing independently, whose fitness is entirely invested into colony mates?

In other words, how can animals have no direct fitness and only indirect fitness? Individuals in colonies are usually related to one another, and relatedness can even be greater than 0. An ecological explanation for the evolution of eusociality is that colonies often produce a very large number of offspring, such that even when relatedness is low the indirect fitness of the non-reproductive workers may be greater than if they had the capacity to reproduce independently.

In eusocial animals, the high productivity resulting from communal life and the efficient division of labor among workers takes place in an environment which is usually well defended against natural enemies Figure 4. In nearly all eusocial species, colonies are protected through structural means such as termite nests in wood, or shrimp in marine sponges , with venom of wasps, bees, and ants , or by both means. Figure 4: Social insects have well protected or defended nests, including termites a , wasps b , and bees c.

Social and altruistic behaviors require a broad view of Darwinian fitness and an understanding that animals can perform behaviors that are responsive to short-term and long-term consequences for their fitness. By conducting research into how organisms interact with their environment and how the environment is predictive of their survival and reproductive success, researchers are able to explain how social behavior has evolved via the mechanism of natural selection.

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