EVOLUTION OF BEHAVIOR
Academic year and teacher
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2016/2017
- Teacher
- AUGUSTO GIUSEPPE LORENZO FOA'
- Credits
- 6
- Didactic period
- Primo Semestre
- SSD
- BIO/05
Training objectives
- The main purpose of the curse is centered on two specific fields of animal behavior:
1. evolution of social behavior; 2. evolution of the mechanisms of animal orientation in space. Furthermore, the course offers the concepts of classical ethology: motivation, innate behavior, learning, communication, ritualization, territorialism.
The main aim of the course is to provide knowledge of the basic concepts of the evolution of social behaviour and mechanism of animal orientation in space.
The student will be guided to understand the evolution of animal behavior of animals and will be able to plan an ethological experiment. Prerequisites
- There are no particular propedeuticity, with the exception of the general knowledge of the Zoology course acquired during the first year of the LT
Course programme
- Origin of social behavior in insects. Eusociality: two contrasting hypotheses (Hamilton vs. Wilson). Eusociality in some mammals.
Sun compass and sky polarization compass in honey bees, ants, lizards and birds. Recent discoveries on the mechanisms of magnetic compass in migratory birds. Notions on migration and navigation in fish and mammals. Didactic methods
- 48 hours of class lectures with slides. 30 hours are dedicated to the evolution of social behavior, while 18 hours examine the mechanisms of orientation in animals.
Learning assessment procedures
- The aim of the examination is to test the level of knowledge and deepening of the topics of the course program and the reasoning skills developed by the student on issues related to evolution of behavior.The evaluation is expressed in thirtieths (minimum score 18): The examination is oral. The student will be asked two questions. One on evolution of social behavior and the other on the evolution of orientation in space. The evaluation is the arithmetic mean in 30th between the answers to the two questions.
The oral examination will allow to evaluate the achievements of the objectives in term of knowledge and understanding; to evaluate the knowledge and ability of applied understanding (for instance how to plan a behavioral experimrnt). The examination is also aimed at evaluating the oral communication skills in relation to the appropriate scientific language. Reference texts
- Papers of the international literature on the different topics of the course
