BIO 488/688; Fall 2009; BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY

Tuesday Thursday; 09:35-10:45pm 

Room: FA 301

Instructor: Dr. Vladimir Pravosudov

FA 140C; Office hours: Tuesday 3-4pm, or by appointment

Phone: 775 784 1271; email: vpravosu@unr.edu

Textbook: AN INTRODUCTION TO BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY, third edition, by J. R. Krebs and N. B. Davies (1993)

 
Behavioral ecology is a discipline that is concerned with evolution and fitness consequences of behavior and therefore the main objective of this course is to learn about the relationships between animal behavior and its fitness consequences and how studying such relationships helps understanding the evolution of behavior. Behavioral Ecology is a subset of Animal Behavior. The field of Animal Behavior may be well characterized by four Tinbergen's questions - development of behavior, function of behavior, survival value of behavior and evolution of behavior. Behavioral Ecology is focused on the last two Tinbergen's questions. Behavioral ecology often relies on theoretical approach and modeling to produce evolutionary hypotheses and predictions. In this course, students will get a firm grip on main directions of behavioral ecology including topics on economic decisions made by animals, evolutionary arms races in predators and prey, competition for resources, living in groups, fighting, sexual conflict, mating systems, altruism and signaling. Students will read primary current research papers on each topic in addition to reading the textbook. Students will be introduced to applying theoretical modeling to solving questions in behavioral ecology. Students will also be working on a writing project including a review of a chosen topic in behavioral ecology. This course is NOT about diversity of behaviors in a variety of animal species; it is a course about principles of behavioral ecology and therefore the examples chosen in a course represent the best fits to conceptual topics under discussion rather than variety of animal species.  

INFORMATION:

● Syllabus

Research written project 

Each student will write a research review paper of any chosen topic in behavioral ecology. This paper should introduce the topic, describe why it is interesting to behavioral ecologists and provide a review of this topic using peer-reviewed research papers. In your project you are required to use at least 5 primary sources (original research articles). All papers should be clearly related to the main topic of the paper. Each paper should be summarized and linked to the main theme following the introduction. At the end of the class, each student will make a brief (10 min) presentation of their paper.

All chosen topics have to be approved. Please feel free to choose any topic in Behavioral Ecology. Use textbook as a source of various topics and feel free to discuss your ideas with me. Your topic should address a broad conceptual question (e.g. optimal foraging, mate choice, parental investment, etc) rather then a small question about a very specific behavior (e.g. how desert tortoise chooses a mate). In your paper you should talk about specific examples, but you need to address these specific questions within a broad conceptual frame.

Research paper topic must be chosen and approved by September 15th.

You should use web-of-science website (www.isiknowledge.com) for literature search - it is the best search mechanism. Once on the website, click on 'web of science'. Within the website, you will be able to do literature search using keywords. When you submitted your keywords, web of science will bring you peer-reviewed publications based on these keywords. You could click on the title of each publication to read the abstract. If you think that you would like to use that paper, click on 'find it' button. It will open a new window with links to full text of the paper. If no links to full text are available, click 'check the catalog for availability in the UNR libraries' and see if UNR has access to an electronic version of this paper.

All other details of the project are provided in syllabus.

Final drafts of written projects must be submitted via turnitin.com

Only one member of each group needs to register with turnitin.com in order to submit the assignment.

Class ID - 2803402; password: Pravosudov

LECTURES 

(1) Aug 25:  Course organization; Introduction to Behavioral Ecology 

(2) Aug 27:  Natural Selection, Ecology and Behavior; textbook Chapter 1; paper 1, paper 2

(3) Sep 1:  Natural Selection, Ecology and Behavior; Testing hypothesis in Behavioral Ecology; textbook chapter 2; paper 3 

(4) Sep 3: Testing hypotheses; Economic decisions; textbook chapter 3; paper 4; paper 5

(5) Sep 8:  Testing hypotheses; Economic decisions; textbook chapter 3; paper 6; paper 7

(7) Sep 15: Economic decisions; Predators vs Prey; Chapter 4; topics for written projects have to be finalized and approved. 

(8) Sep 17:  Predator vs prey; paper 10

 (9) Sep 22:  Predator vs prey; Competing for resources; Chapter 5; paper 11

(10) Sep 24: Predator vs prey; Competing for resources 

(12) Oct 1: Competing for resources; Living in groups, paper 13, paper 14

(13) Oct 6: Living in groups ; Book chapter 6  

(14) Oct 8:  Midterm (in class), please bring calculators!

(15) Oct 13: Living in groups; Fighting and assessment; paper 15, paper 16

(17) Oct 20: Fighting and assessment; Book chapter 7

(18) Oct 22:   Fighting and assessment; Book chapter 7; Sexual conflict and Sexual Selection; book chapter 8

CURRENT GRADES

(19) Oct 27:   Sexual conflict and Sexual Selection; book chapter 8; paper 18; paper 19

(20) Oct 29: Sexual conflict and Sexual Selection; Mating systems, Book chapter 9; paper 20

(22) Nov 5:  Mating systems, Book chapter 9; Alternative breeding stratgies, Book chapter 10

(23) Nov 10:  Alternative breeding strategies, paper 23, paper 24

(24) Nov 12: Alternative breeding strategies

Sample Power Point Presentation

Current grades

STUDY QUESTIONS FOR THE FINAL EXAM

(25) Nov 17: Student Project presentations; All presentations will be evaluated by EVERYBODY in class. Your evaluations of these presentations is part of the project and you will receive 2 points for each evaluation (all evaluations are worth 5% of the project grade). These are not bonus points, so please try to attend all presentations or you will loose points. I will hand out evaluation forms at the beginning of each class.

(26) Nov 19: Student Project Presentations ; Written projects are due. Submit the entire project via turnitin.com

(27) Nov 24: Project presentations

 NOVEMBER 26 - THNKSGIVING, NO CLASSES

(28) Dec 1:  Project presentations

(29) Dec 3:   Project presentations 

(30) Dec 8:   Project presentations 

FINAL EXAM: FRIDAY DEC 11, 730-9:30 am; same room

GRADING:

Quizzes - 25%

Midterm - 25%

Final - 25%

Written Project 25%

Grades will be assigned as straight percentages, with 100% being determined by the highest score on any given test, not by the highest number of points possible (unless of course somebody gets 100% correct).  That is, if the highest exam score is 90%, then all exam scores will be divided into 90 to determine their percentage score (e.g., a score of 80 on that test would be 88.9%).  Letter grade cutoffs will be (94%+ - A, 90-93% - A-, 87-89% - B+, 83-86% - B, 80-82% - B-, 77-79% - C+, 73-76% - C, 70-72% - C-, 67-69% - D+, 63-66% - D, 60-62% - D-; <60% - F.