Predicting Behaviour

Predicting Behaviour

1. Understand consequences of environmental change

   • Human disturbance
   • Habitat loss

2. Helps management as we can say how animals react without observing them

   • Measure how they will react to alternative management schemes
   • Conservation
     • maintain/increase pop. size
     • decrease pop. size of pests

3. Basis of prediction

   • ANIMALS WILL ALWAYS BEHAVE IN A WAY THAT MAXIMISES FITNESS

4. Behaviour is a decision

   • Diet
   • Habitat selection
   • Predator response
   • Mate choice

5. Behaviour constrained by:

   • Biology
   • Physiology
     • E.g. mode./speed of movement

6. Relies on understanding of costs/benefits associated with different decisions

7. Optimization models

   • Natural selection increases animal fitness
   • uses parameters to measure fitness
   • increased feeding rate increases fitness
   • Behaviours that increase feeding time increase fitness
   • Predict animals should adopt 'optimal' behaviour

8. Game theory model

   • Animals adopt behaviour that maximise fitness
   • Used when optimal behaviour of one influences another
     • E.g. stealing prey= increases feeding
   • Dependent on dominance of animal

9. State and trade-offs

   • Feeding and disturbance experiment
     • Birds approach closer, return quicker in winter for food
       • As feeding conditions decrease, energy requirements increase
   • Cost- predation risk./storage

10. Allele effect

    • Reproduction/survival decrease if pop. small
    • Small pop. = more vulnerable
    • Finding mate/food more difficult
    • Behavioural mechanism
      • Anti-predator aggression
        • Colonial male sunfish spend less time pursuing predators then solitary males
      • Predator swamping
        • More eggs produced so predator will not eat them all
    • Can cause populations to collapse if intense amount of pressure
      • e.g. overfishing

11. Buffer effect

    • low pop. size species occur more in better patches
    • Higher pop. levels in poorer patches
    • Applies to breeding or non-breeding

12. Individual variation

    • Individuals differ
      • efficiency finding food
      • dominance (steal/find food)
      • Attractiveness to mate
      • disease resistance
      • I.V allows species to cope with broader range of environmental conditions
        • Increases long-term success
    • Population dynamics emerge

13. Help understand ecological systems

14. Constraints on behaviour

    • Range of prey/food types
    • max speed of movement
    • Habitat selected for breeding/feeding
    • Ability to detect/capture prey
      • Competition density dependent

15. Natural Selection

    • Process that acts upon individuals within population if:
      • a) variation amongst individuals in some trait
      • b) trait related to component of fitness
        • fecundity/suvivorship
      • c) trait inherited by offrsping
    • those that are fit will leave higher number of descendants
      • in this way, group will change over time

16. Evolution of behaviour

    • Learned/copied
    • Evolved if passed down between generations
      • migration routes

17. Behavioural Ecology

    • Provides framework for answering Q's
    • Set methods for prediction
    • Underlying theories
      • e.g. Natural selection
    • Assist conservation by predicting:
      • Reproduction
        • All 4 Population processes
      • Mortality
      • Immigration
      • Emmigration

18. LIMITATIONS

    • Many years to develop
    • Pop. size may not vary enough
    • No underlying theory for basis
    • Difficult to make predictions for new circumstances
      • Climate change
      • Habitat loss
      • New Management

19. Allows population processes to be directly predicted