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An organism's behavioral strategies and ability to adapt will determine how they respond under different environmental conditions. Fitness is a common measure of adaptive success, and can be defined as the number of descendants left over after a group exhibits a particular behavioral strategy. [24]
Behavioral ecology, also spelled behavioural ecology, is the study of the evolutionary basis for animal behavior due to ecological pressures. Behavioral ecology emerged from ethology after Niko Tinbergen outlined four questions to address when studying animal behaviors: What are the proximate causes, ontogeny, survival value, and phylogeny of a behavior?
Another explanation for the neoteny in domesticated animals can be the selection for certain behavioral characteristics. Behavior is linked to genetics which therefore means that when a behavioral trait is selected for, a physical trait may also be selected for due to mechanisms like linkage disequilibrium. Often, juvenile behaviors are ...
Phenotypic plasticity refers to some of the changes in an organism's behavior, morphology and physiology in response to a unique environment. [1] [2] Fundamental to the way in which organisms cope with environmental variation, phenotypic plasticity encompasses all types of environmentally induced changes (e.g. morphological, physiological, behavioural, phenological) that may or may not be ...
All organisms can exhibit behaviours. Even plants express complex behaviour, including memory and communication. [116] Behavioural ecology is the study of an organism's behaviour in its environment and its ecological and evolutionary implications. Ethology is the study of observable movement or behaviour in animals.
Culture is just one source of adaptive behavior an organism exhibits to better exploit its environment. When behavioral variation reflects differential phenotypic plasticity, it is due more to ecological pressures than cultural ones. In other words, when an animal changes its behavior over its lifespan, this is most often a result of changes in ...
Human behavioral ecology (HBE) or human evolutionary ecology applies the principles of evolutionary theory and optimization to the study of human behavioral and cultural diversity. HBE examines the adaptive design of traits , behaviors , and life histories of humans in an ecological context.
In addition to behavioral adaptations, physiological adaptations help ectotherms regulate temperature. Diving reptiles conserve heat by heat exchange mechanisms, whereby cold blood from the skin picks up heat from blood moving outward from the body core, re-using and thereby conserving some of the heat that otherwise would have been wasted.