Excellent Idea!!

I came across a fantastic website today- Suzy Renn at Reed College teaches Animal Behavior. As part of the course, students pair up, choose a focal topic and create a web page that tackles the topic from the perspective of Niko Tinbergen's 4 questions:

1. How does it work?
2. How did it develop?
3. What is it for?
4. How did it evolve?

Some titles to whet your appetite! 

       Love Dart Shooting in Simultaneously Hermaphroditic Snails

       Bed bug bumping Booties

       Magnetic orientation

       Platypus electroreception

Great job Suzy!! (I like her "words of wisdom", too)

 

 

Bumble bee defense

ScienceDaily (2010-05-29) -- Toxic or venomous animals, like bumblebees, are often brightly colored to tell would-be predators to keep away. However scientists in the UK have found a bumblebee's defense could extend further than its distinctive color pattern and may indeed be linked to their characteristic shape, flight pattern or buzzing sound.

Full article

Eciton Army Ants- silent movie by Alex Wild

 
One of the top small critter photographers out there is Alex Wild (visit his site here). Here's a short video of Eciton army ants.

Winged Migration

Winged migration is a great documentary about the drama of migration in birds. The above video is part 1/8 (I'm sure you'll figure out how to see the rest of it!!)

Elephants respond to carcass

Elephant close encounter

Humming birds

Genetic Code for Monogamy

Plagues of Locusts

 

Swarming desert locusts have a complex life cycle marked by different morphological and behavioral phases. I'll add more info to this posting later, including some links to citations.

Termite World

Naked Mole Rat

Seeing with Sound

A fantastic demo on how biosonar works!

RRraaawwrrr.... all about Lions

The Lion Research Center is led by Craig Packer, and is arguably the top research group on lion behavior. The website has an extensive publication list (all one-click-pdfs) on virtually all the components of the life history of lions. 

My favorite set of experiments were the choice experiments with stuffed lion toys, showing that dark manes are both more intimidating to males and attractive to females. There are a few videos as well!

Photo from the Lion Research Center

Go to Yale and learn Game Theory

Mating Systems and Parental Care

Part of a series of lectures by Steven Stearns at Yale University.   Yale University launched a program called Open Yale- where lecturers save all their course materials (including audio and video) and publish them freely online. Take a quick course in....

1. Freshman Organic Chemistry

2. Principles of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Behavior

3. Civil War and Reconstruction Era

4. Game Theory

....and much much more.

I haven't sat down and gone through the whole EEB course yet. I'll let you know what I think in a few days. In the meantime, you've got something to learn!!

Meerkat Family Breakfast

  Meerkat Family Breakfast | photo page - everystockphoto

Effects of Helpers on Juvenile Development and Survival in Meerkats  

Although breeding success is known to increase with group size in several cooperative mammals, the mechanisms underlying these relationships are uncertain. We show that in wild groups of cooperative meerkats, Suricata suricatta, reductions in the ratio of helpers to pups depress the daily weight gain and growth of pups and the daily weight gain of helpers. Increases in the daily weight gain of pups are associated with heavier weights at independence and at 1 year of age, as well as with improved foraging success as juveniles and higher survival rates through the first year of life. These results suggest that the effects of helpers on the fitness of pups extend beyond weaning and that helpers may gain direct as well as indirect benefits by feeding pups.

Clutton-Brock et al. (2001)

Science 28 September 2001:

Vol. 293. no. 5539, pp. 2446 - 2449

DOI: 10.1126/science.1061274

Large Animal Research Group at Cambridge University 

The Alcon Blue Butterfly

This is a video excerpt from "Intimate Relations" an episode of Life in the Undergrowth (BBC).
The plot thickens...  butterfly larvae in the ants' nests are susceptible to parasitoid wasps....


Reference:

A Mosaic of Chemical Coevolution in a Large Blue Butterfly

Nash et al.
Science 4 January 2008: 88-90
DOI: 10.1126/science.1149180

Bonobos

This video on the Bonobo chimp shows their high level of cognitive ability and their strong similarity to humans.

Susan Savage-Rumbaugh on apes | Video on TED.com

"Pied piper" for bees?

How does a bee colony "decide" when to swarm? Apparently a small number of individuals perform a behavior called "piping" that triggers the group to follow them.

Link to article at BBC Earth News (video)

Video of queen bee piping

How cooperation is maintained in human societies

Humans are incredibly cooperative, but why do people cooperate and how is cooperation maintained? A new research study by UCLA anthropology professor Robert Boyd and his colleagues from the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico suggests cooperation in large groups is maintained by punishment.

Link to Article on ScienceDaily

Intelligence of crows

New Caledonian Crow by Vince Musi for National Geographic Magazine. ©2008 All Rights Reserved

Joshua Klein on the intelligence of crows | Video on TED.com

Recommended Reads

Agony aunt for the bizarre, Dr. Tatiana answers difficult questions e.g.
"Don't Wanna Be Butch in Botswana" writes, "I'm a spotted hyena, a girl. The only trouble is, I've got a large phallus. I can't help feeling that this is unladylike. What's wrong with me?"
Recommended for a good laugh, but chock-full of fantastic biology!!


Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation

E.O. Wilson on saving life on Earth

"If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos."

E.O. Wilson on saving life on Earth | Video on TED.com

What is in store?

The major topics that will be covered include:

1. Natural selection and behavior
   
2. Levels of selection and analysis
   
3. Genes and behavior
4. Communication
   
5. Sexual selection
   
6. Mating systems
7. Parental care
8. Social behavior and group living
9. Kin selection and reciprocity
10. Reproductive skew & game theory
    
11. Habitat selection
    
12. Neurobiology and behavior
    
13. Hormones and behavior
14. Feeding and foraging
15. Defensive behavior
16. Evolution of human behavior

My research focuses on foraging ecology and self organization in ants. I'm currently working with the ant Messor pergandei, which is a gorgeous big black ant found in the Sonoran desert.
Posts will be tagged with the topic titles, concepts, and species names so that it's easy to navigate. I will include lots of links to multimedia.

Big Black Ants

I am a myrmecologist who will be teaching Animal Behavior this summer at Arizona State University. This blog will serve as a bulletin board for articles and links that are either for the course, or "just ant stuff".


Welcome and enjoy!







Students: the major forum for course materials/assignments/discussion etc is Blackboard.