Behavioral Ecology
Objective
Analyze and deepen the field of theoretical and practical knowledge of behavioral ecology, to ensure that students manage to interpret results and develop research designs that aim to study animal behavior.
Foundation
Behavioral ecology is a field of knowledge of biology that aims to study the way in which each behavior contributes to the survival and reproduction of individuals in relation to their environment, ecological and social. Behavioral ecology deals not only with those behavioral survival strategies through resource exploitation and avoidance of predators, but also with how behavior contributes to reproductive success. In this way, this discipline deals with analyzing the adequacy value presented by different animal behaviors. Thus, the basic contents of this subject will include the study of the adaptive value of the use of space and dispersion, sexual selection, reproductive tactics and strategies, mating systems, reproductive counter-strategies, and social systems in vertebrate animal species.
Ecology turns to ethology as an explanatory mechanism for almost all the processes that occupy it. Thus, behavioral ecology allows us to qualify and quantify the responses to almost all the processes studied by ecologists. Because behavioral ecology qualifies and quantifies the behavioral interactions that contribute to the social and reproductive system of a species, the study of the behavioral strategies that compose them is of great importance. This, due to its potential impact on the variation of birth, reproduction, survival, death and dispersal rates. Among other practices, behavioral ecology allows:
i) Evaluate how a certain behavior maximizes the fitness of individuals.
ii) Quantify behavioral variations within populations.
iii) Study the ecological and evolutionary implications of the behavioral strategies of animals in relevant situations from the point of view of the theory of evolution
iv) Identify and analyze the intensity of sexual conflict in relation to the characteristics of the reproductive behavior of individuals of a species and environmental and social variations.
v) Identify and evaluate the responses of individuals to changes in their habitat.
vi) Analyze the different social and reproductive systems in relation to population dynamics.
vii) Propose behavioral responses that act as regulatory mechanisms of population abundance
Responsible: José Priotto - Andrea Steinmann