Animal Behavior Practice Problems

Which migratory animals are the most heavily impacted by wind energy production?

Migratory animals often prepare themselves before migrating. Why do some avian migrants adjust their internal organs before departure?

_____ is the evolutionary strategy that favors the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even though it may cost the organism's survival and reproduction.

In Hamilton's rule, what does the "Coefficient of relatedness" (r) mean?

Migration refers to the pattern of behavior among animals in which they travel from one location to another for several reasons. Salmon start their lives in rivers and migrate to the sea to feed and grow. Why do they migrate back to rivers after a few years?

Which of the following is an example of altruism?

Poison-dart frogs are known for their deadly toxins. How do they warn their predators to avoid being preyed on?

Ants use pheromones to direct the colony to food sources. When the food is rich, each ant will deposit pheromones on the trail as they move to and from their colony. When the food runs out, how will they communicate this with other ants?

How do most insects, like ants and bees, communicate with each other?

The male fiddler crab has an enlarged major claw. What is the primary function of this specialized claw?

Bolas spiders have developed several ways to forage effectively during the night. How do male Bolas spiders attract male moths?

According to optimal foraging model, natural selection favors foraging behavior that ___________ costs, and ___________ benefits.

Which of the following is not a learned animal behavior?

What is the metric for indirect fitness?

Which of the following statements about research focused on the ultimate causation of behavior is correct?

Which of the following factors is not involved in the proximate causation of behavior?

_____ assortative mating is the tendency to choose mates with similar characteristics, while the tendency to choose mates with dissimilar character characteristics is referred to as _____ assortative mating.

Natural selection favors altruistic acts when the resulting benefit to the recipient, corrected for relatedness, exceeds the cost to the altruist. This statement is in accordance with

Identify the false statement regarding the behavior of female spotted sandpipers:

Identify the incorrect statement regarding chimpanzees 

There is an annual addition of new syllables to a canary's song bank because:

All of the following are required for the evolution of a behavioral trait by natural selection except:

Which one of the following is not true regarding innate behaviors?

The behavior that refers to the interaction between two or more animals of typically the same species is called:

The probability of paternity is higher when:

____ is a series or pattern of actions that can be triggered by a certain stimulus and is unchanging.

Identical twins have the same genotype due to their identical DNA. How do scientists use this to study the heritability of certain traits?

Which of the following poses a significant risk while foraging and has the potential to influence behaviour?

Identify which of the following statements about the "Optimal foraging model" is incorrect.

Determine the incorrect statement about learning.

Bi-parental care is most common in birds, where the male usually provides ______ and the female provides ________.

The fruitless gene among male fruitflies encodes a protein that stimulates a suite of genes that are responsible for courtship behavior. Examples of these courtship behaviors include tapping the female's abdomen with their foreleg and vibrating one of their wings. What could result if a male fruitfly has a mutated version of the fruitless gene?

Identify the incorrect statement about mating behavior.

Many species of cuckoo birds are known to be brood parasites. They usually do not build their own nests instead, they lay their eggs in other birds' nests. Which of the following behaviors do cuckoo birds use to lessen the competition with the victim's eggs or hatchlings?

Toolmaking was thought of as a special trait that distinguished humans from other related species, including chimpanzees. However, Jane Goodall observed a chimpanzee's behavior that debunked such a hypothesis. Which of the following did she observe?