EVOLUTION OF BEHAVIOR
Academic year and teacher
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2015/2016
- Teacher
- AUGUSTO GIUSEPPE LORENZO FOA'
- Credits
- 6
- Curriculum
- Biologia evoluzionistica e genetica
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- BIO/05
Training objectives
- The course is given in English. The main purpose is that of broadening the knowledge in two specific fields of animal behavior:
1. evolution of social behavior;
2. evolution of the mechanisms of animal orientation in space.
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 is no prerequisites, but basic knowledge in classical ethology, ecoethology and animal orientations can be useful. All topics above are covered by the Ethology course in the same University.
Course programme
- Origin of social behavior in insects. Eusociality: two contrasting hypotheses (Hamilton vs. Wilson). Eusociality in some mammals. (16 ore, 2 CFU).
Sun compass and sky polarization compass in honey bees, ants, lizards and birds. (16 ore, 2 CFU).
Recent discoveries on the mechanisms of magnetic compass in migratory birds. Notions on migration and navigation in fish and mammals. (16 ore, 2 CFU). Didactic methods
- Class lectures of 48 hours with slides. Furthermore each student is requested to pprepare and give a seminar in english on one of the topics of the course. The result of the seminar forms the 50% of the evaluation of the student.
Learning assessment procedures
- Oral examinations will be given in english. Each student will be asked two question on the topic of the course. The evaluation is the mean value between the evaluation given to the individual seminar and the evaluation of the answers to the two oral questions.
Reference texts
- International literature papers on the different topics examined in the course.
