Behavioral ecology, also spelled behavioural ecology, is the study of the evolutionary basis for animal behavior due to ecological pressures. Behavioral ecology emerged from ethology after Niko Tinbergen outlined four questions to address when studying animal behaviors: What are the proximate causes, ontogeny, survival value, and phylogeny of a behavior?
The long-tailed tit, also named long-tailed bushtit, is a common bird found throughout Europe and the Palearctic. The genus name Aegithalos was a term used by Aristotle for some European tits, including the long-tailed tit.
The tree swallow is a migratory bird of the family Hirundinidae. Found in the Americas, the tree swallow was first described in 1807 by French ornithologist Louis Vieillot as Hirundo bicolor. It has since been moved to its current genus, Tachycineta, within which its phylogenetic placement is debated. The tree swallow has glossy blue-green upperparts, with the exception of the blackish wings and tail, and white underparts. The bill is black, the eyes dark brown, and the legs and feet pale brown. The female is generally duller than the male, and the first-year female has mostly brown upperparts, with some blue feathers. Juveniles have brown upperparts, and grey-brown-washed breasts. The tree swallow breeds in the US and Canada. It winters along southern US coasts south, along the Gulf Coast, to Panama and the northwestern coast of South America, and in the West Indies.
The acorn woodpecker is a medium-sized woodpecker, 21 cm (8.3 in) long, with an average weight of 85 g (3.0 oz).
Alloparenting is a term used to classify any form of parental care provided by an individual towards young that are not its own direct offspring. These are often referred to as "non-descendant" young, even though grandchildren can be among them. Among humans, alloparenting is often performed by a child's grandparents and older siblings. Individuals providing this care are referred to using the neutral term of alloparent.
The Siberian jay is a small jay with a widespread distribution within the coniferous forests in North Eurasia. It has grey-brown plumage with a darker brown crown and a paler throat. It is rusty-red in a panel near the wing-bend, on the undertail coverts and on the sides of the tail. The sexes are similar. Although its habitat is being fragmented, it is a common bird with a very wide range so the International Union for Conservation of Nature has assessed its conservation status as being of "least concern".
Philopatry is the tendency of an organism to stay in or habitually return to a particular area. The causes of philopatry are numerous, but natal philopatry, where animals return to their birthplace to breed, may be the most common. The term derives from the Greek roots philo, "liking, loving" and patra, "fatherland", although in recent years the term has been applied to more than just the animal's birthplace. Recent usage refers to animals returning to the same area to breed despite not being born there, and migratory species that demonstrate site fidelity: reusing stopovers, staging points, and wintering grounds.
Cooperative breeding is a social system characterized by alloparental care: offspring receive care not only from their parents, but also from additional group members, often called helpers. Cooperative breeding encompasses a wide variety of group structures, from a breeding pair with helpers that are offspring from a previous season, to groups with multiple breeding males and females (polygynandry) and helpers that are the adult offspring of some but not all of the breeders in the group, to groups in which helpers sometimes achieve co-breeding status by producing their own offspring as part of the group's brood. Cooperative breeding occurs across taxonomic groups including birds, mammals, fish, and insects.
The Seychelles warbler, also known as Seychelles brush warbler, is a small songbird found on five granitic and corraline islands in the Seychelles. It is a greenish-brown bird with long legs and a long slender bill. It is primarily found in forested areas on the islands. The Seychelles warbler is a rarity in that it exhibits cooperative breeding, or alloparenting, which means that the monogamous pair is assisted by nonbreeding female helpers.
Reproductive suppression is the prevention or inhibition of reproduction in otherwise healthy adult individuals. It includes delayed sexual maturation (puberty) or inhibition of sexual receptivity, facultatively increased interbirth interval through delayed or inhibited ovulation or spontaneous or induced abortion, abandonment of immature and dependent offspring, mate guarding, selective destruction and worker policing of eggs in some eusocial insects or cooperatively breeding birds, and infanticide, and infanticide in carnivores of the offspring of subordinate females either by directly killing by dominant females or males in mammals or indirectly through the withholding of assistance with infant care in marmosets and some carnivores. The Reproductive Suppression Model argues that "females can optimize their lifetime reproductive success by suppressing reproduction when future conditions for the survival of offspring are likely to be greatly improved over present ones”. When intragroup competition is high it may be beneficial to suppress the reproduction of others, and for subordinate females to suppress their own reproduction until a later time when social competition is reduced. This leads to reproductive skew within a social group, with some individuals having more offspring than others. The cost of reproductive suppression to the individual is lowest at the earliest stages of a reproductive event and reproductive suppression is often easiest to induce at the pre-ovulatory or earliest stages of pregnancy in mammals, and greatest after a birth. Therefore, neuroendocrine cues for assessing reproductive success should evolve to be reliable at early stages in the ovulatory cycle. Reproductive suppression occurs in its most extreme form in eusocial insects such as termites, hornets and bees and the mammalian naked mole rat which depend on a complex division of labor within the group for survival and in which specific genes, epigenetics and other factors are known to determine whether individuals will permanently be unable to breed or able to reach reproductive maturity under particular social conditions, and cooperatively breeding fish, birds and mammals in which a breeding pair depends on helpers whose reproduction is suppressed for the survival of their own offspring. In eusocial and cooperatively breeding animals most non-reproducing helpers engage in kin selection, enhancing their own inclusive fitness by ensuring the survival of offspring they are closely related to. Wolf packs suppress subordinate breeding.
In animals, infanticide involves the intentional killing of young offspring by a mature animal of the same species. Animal infanticide is studied in zoology, specifically in the field of ethology. Ovicide is the analogous destruction of eggs. The practice has been observed in many species throughout the animal kingdom, especially primates but including microscopic rotifers, insects, fish, amphibians, birds and mammals. Infanticide can be practiced by both males and females.
Parental care is a behavioural and evolutionary strategy adopted by some animals, involving a parental investment being made to the evolutionary fitness of offspring. Patterns of parental care are widespread and highly diverse across the animal kingdom. There is great variation in different animal groups in terms of how parents care for offspring, and the amount of resources invested by parents. For example, there may be considerable variation in the amount of care invested by each sex, where females may invest more in some species, males invest more in others, or investment may be shared equally. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed to describe this variation and patterns in parental care that exist between the sexes, as well as among species.
The Arabian babbler is a passerine bird until recently placed in the genus Turdoides. It is a communally nesting resident bird of arid scrub in the Middle East which lives together in relatively stable groups with strict orders of rank.
Mate desertion occurs when one or both parents abandon their current offspring, and thereby reduce or stop providing parental care. Often, by deserting, a parent attempts to increase breeding opportunities by seeking out another mate. This form of mating strategy behavior is exhibited in insects, birds and mammals. Typically, males are more likely to desert, but both males and females have been observed to practice mate desertion.
Egg tossing or egg destruction is a behavior observed in some species of birds where one individual removes an egg from the communal nest. This is related to infanticide, where parents kill their own or other's offspring. Egg tossing is observed in avian species, most commonly females, who are involved with cooperative breeding or brood parasitism. Among colonial non-co-nesting birds, egg-tossing is observed to be performed by an individual of the same species, and, in the case of brood parasites, this behavior is done by either the same or different species. The behavior of egg tossing offers its advantages and disadvantages to both the actor and recipient.
Eusociality, the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care, overlapping generations within a colony of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups. The division of labor creates specialized behavioral groups within an animal society which are sometimes referred to as 'castes'. Eusociality is distinguished from all other social systems because individuals of at least one caste usually lose the ability to perform at least one behavior characteristic of individuals in another caste. Eusocial colonies can be viewed as superorganisms.
In animal behaviour, the hypothesis of group augmentation is where animals living in a group behave so as to increase the group's size, namely through the recruitment of new members. Such behaviour could be selected for if larger group size increases the chance of survival of the individuals in the group. Supported hypothesis of selection mechanisms towards increasing group size currently exist, in helping raise other animals' offspring and performing other cooperative breeding acts including kin selection. It is currently proposed that group augmentation may be another mechanism which occurs through the recruiting of new group members and helping of unrelated individuals within a group.
In behavioral ecology, polyandry is a class of mating system where one female mates with several males in a breeding season. Polyandry is often compared to the polygyny system based on the cost and benefits incurred by members of each sex. Polygyny is where one male mates with several females in a breeding season . A common example of polyandrous mating can be found in the field cricket of the invertebrate order Orthoptera. Polyandrous behavior is also prominent in many other insect species, including the red flour beetle and the species of spider Stegodyphus lineatus. Polyandry also occurs in some primates such as marmosets, mammal groups, the marsupial genus' Antechinus and bandicoots, around 1% of all bird species, such as jacanas and dunnocks, insects such as honeybees, and fish such as pipefish.
Parental care refers to the level of investment provided by the mother and the father to ensure development and survival of their offspring. In most birds, parents invest profoundly in their offspring as a mutual effort, making a majority of them socially monogamous for the duration of the breeding season. This happens regardless of whether there is a paternal uncertainty.
Allofeeding is a type of food sharing behaviour observed in cooperatively breeding species of birds. Allofeeding refers to a parent, sibling or unrelated adult bird feeding altricial hatchlings, which are dependent on parental care for their survival. Allofeeding also refers to food sharing between adults of the same species. Allofeeding can occur between mates during mating rituals, courtship, egg laying or incubation, between peers of the same species, or as a form of parental care.
