In this lecture, we consider the different historical approaches that have led up to modern behavioral ecology, including ethology and behaviorism. This gives us an opportunity to discuss von Uexküll's "umwelt" and give various examples of animals whose sensory and perceptual experience is notably different than the experience of a human. This sets us up to discuss how important it is to consider the physiological mechanisms and constraints that can limit what kinds of behaviors are able to evolve, and we use ring dove mating as an example of this. We close by looking ahead to the next unit on behavioral genetics and discuss how the four different mechanisms of evolution (natural selection, genetic drift, mutation, and migration) also can shape the patterns of behaviors that can evolve. Overall, this lecture helps to draw boundaries around what is the field of behavioral ecology while also establishing that those boundaries are necessarily porous and permeable and must both be influenced by and influence surrounding fields from physiology and evolution.
Topic highlights:
- historical approaches to animal behavior, including:
- behaviorism
- ethology (in a classical sense)
- umwelt
- the relationship between animal behavior and each of physiology, neuroscience, sensory biology, and endocrinology
- the relationship between animal behavior and each of genetic drift, natural selection, mutation, and migration
- refresher on the meaning of genetic drift
Important terms: behaviorism, ethology, umwelt, genetic drift, mutation, migration, natural selection
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