BIO420 Animal Behavior
Lead Faculty: Dr. Michael R. Maxwell
Course Description
Study of animal behavior that integrates the work of biologists, psychologists and anthropologists.
Learning Outcomes
- Apply the scientific method to both experimental and observational approaches to the study of animal behavior.
- Appreciate the contributions to the study of behavior from investigators representing the fields of biology, psychology, anthropology, and sociology.
- Understand neural and hormonal behavioral control and regulation and the interaction of these physiological processes with the environment.
- Comprehend the major evolutionary processes influencing the development of behavior.
- Understand the outcome of evolutionary influences i.e. phylogeny, as well as the ontogeny (development) of behavior.
- Recognize general principles common to all behavior and the behavioral continuum evident in the phylogenetic series.
- Understand the biological clocks that regulate and pattern behavior activity.
- Understand the role(s) of behavior in population biology, with attention to resource competition.
- Comprehend the origins, evolutionary development and multiple functions of social behavior.
- Understand the development of social behavior in individuals i.e. the socialization process.
- Appreciate the comparative approach to the study of social behavior and implications of sociobiology for human social behavior.
- Understand the primary systems of communication and the lexicon of messages/communicative interactions among vertebrate animals.
