Here are some questions to help you review. Use them to organize your notes and focus on important concepts.
Review Guide for lecture 1 – Mark Cooper
Know the reasons we study animal behavior. Know the different early periods of history. (cave drawings, Aristotle, Native Americans), Know the three foundations. Know the different people involved in the history. (Andreas Versalius, Charles Darwin, George John Romanes), Be sure you can recognize the names of each person and what they are known for. What is natural selection? Sexual selection? What is the difference between comparative psychology and ethology? (Pavlov, Watson, Skinner, von Frisch, Lorenz, Tinbergen), What is Behaviorism? Who is Little Albert? What was done to him? Classical conditioning? Operant conditioning? Know the scientists that won noble prizes and what they won for. Know all the different scientists and the ideas they came up with? What is imprinting? FAP? MAP? What is Tinbergen’s four questions? What is the difference between proximate and ultimate questions? (Be sure you can do problems similar to the homework) Why did we watch the bird movie? What is an Ethogram?
Review Guide for lecture 2 – Mark Cooper
What is a genotype? Phenotype? Who is Mendel? How many genes do we have? What is an allele? Homozygous? Heterozygous? Dominant? Recessive? What does innate mean? Be able to tell what two compounds affect foraging behavior in bees (Homework). As bees age, what order do they do particular tasks? What happens when older bees are added to a colony? What affect does this have on young bee behavior? Know what happened in the cross fostering and spatial learning experiments. What is imprinting? What is the difference between filial and sexual imprinting? What is the sensitive period? Critical period? How did the chickadee experiment show that both genes and environment are responsible for spatial learning? Know the results from the twin/adoptive parent experiment. Who has the highest correlations in spatial ability? Know the examples of single gene effects in bees and mice, and humans (don’t forget to look at homework questions). Know the multigenic effects in lovebirds. Know the experiment on social deprivation in Rhesus monkeys (What is developmental homeostasis?) What is bias learning? Know the two examples (rats and bats). Habituation? Sensitization? Know the following experiments: The Albert Bandura and the Bobo doll, the Milgram Experiment, and the Zimbardo Prison Experiment.
Know the two articles (Genetics and Ravens) and questions from these articles in the homework.
Genetics Article: What are the six different actions involved in fly courtship behavior? What occurs during each step? What are the two seats of attraction in the male’s brain? What behavior have males learned about courtship of females? How does this work? What is the advantage? What gene is believed to be responsible for this behavior? What lessons can be learned from these fly studies?
Raven Article: Why did the treat on a string experiment allow Heinrich and Bugnyar to assume this behavior was not trial and error learning? What type of Ravens could accomplish this goal? How did they determine it was not “mentally” rewarding and actually knew it was attached to the perch? What happened with the meat on a string was placed in a situation where they had to pull down to make the food rise? When did the Raven’s give up? What answer do the authors give to the reason humans (and ravens) don’t “do it right” the first time (programmed from birth) and have to “muddle” through?
Review Guide for lecture 3
Data Nugget handout: review the study organisms. Why did crickets lose their song and how did this occur? What was the predator? How did silent males get mating opportunities with females?
Scientific American reading: What do tiger moths do when they are approached by hunting bats? What happens to the sonar system of bats when the moths make noise?
Second reading: How do hawkmoths make ultrasonic sounds?
Aerial Defense Tactics of Flying Insects reading: How do bats hunt? Who did the work leading to this discovery? How do moths avoid becoming bat food? Who did this work? How is the stimulus detected? What is the effector? How do the two receptors respond to the stimuli? What are the two stimuli that crickets respond to and how does the response differ? What is the role of the interneuron-1 and how does it function?
Lecture: Describe a very simple reflex. Know the following vocabulary: stimulus, sensory neuron, motor neuron, effector. What is added to this pathway in a more complicated reflex?
Describe the research of Tinbergen on Herring Gull begging behavior. Name the stimulus or releaser for the chicks' behavior. Define a fixed action pattern.
Neural anatomy: know the dendrites, axons and cell body. How is an action potential passed from one cell to the next (there are 4 steps)? Define action potential (in general terms) and neurotransmitter.
How do Ormia flies use cricket song to find their prey? How do male and female flies differ in this ability?
How do sea slugs respond to sea stars? What is the stimulus? What is the response? What is a Central Pattern Generator?
What is the somatosensory cortex? Where is it located in the brain? Consider the star-nosed mole. What parts of its body send large amounts of sensory information to the somatosensory cortex? What stimuli does the animal detect with these body parts?
Review Guide for Lecture 4
Two readings on dogs and their understanding of cues: Review the articles and the homework. Be clear on how the two experiments differ and why they got different results. Relate this to ultimate and proximate explanations.
How are neural responses controlled. Refer to the praying mantis and cricket. Be clear on the ultimate and proximate causes of neural responses.
Compare and contrast hormones and neurons? Which method is faster? Lasts longer? Wide-spread effect? Consider the case of epinephrine and norepinephrine.
In monarchs, what affects migration behavior? How do you time shift an organism, like a monarch? What happens to the migration direction of a monarch that has been shifted 6 hours? Does this support the use of stimuli or a built-in clock?
Crickets have a circadian rhythm. Without any visual stimulus, what happens to this rhythm and what is this called? How is the internal clock entrained? What hormone maintains the internal clock and where are the released? Answer the same questions about human circadian rhythm. What kind of organisms might not have a circadian rhythm?
What are circannual rhythms? Name and describe two examples of organisms with circannual rhythms. Which requires entrainment? Why? We also discussed additional cycles with entrainment. Name each example and the stimulus that entrain that behavior and consider the ultimate cause of this relationship.
The white-crowned sparrow has a demonstrated relationship before neural and hormonal response. Describe it.
What behavior does each of the following hormones control: testosterone, vasopressin, oxytocin, and progesterone.
Oxytocin is a hormone that may alter human behavior. Describe the experiment where oxytocin altered the results of a moral experiment (train tracks). We also watched a talk about oxytocin. What can change a person's response to oxytocin. Is oxytocin the “moral molecule”
Are there costs to high testosterone levels? Consider both the lizard and antechinus. Name two different reproductive strategies. Which one would you expect would have higher levels of testosterone?
Name two stress hormones and which groups of animals have them. What social interactions can raise the levels? How do we measure hormone levels?