Dec 21, 2024  
2016-17 Undergraduate Catalog 
    
2016-17 Undergraduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

BI 332 Animal Behavior


This is an upper-level course focused on animal behavior from an evolutionary perspective. The course explores how animals process and respond to environmental stimuli, including treatments of physiology, learning, memory, hormonal behavior, fixed action patterns, communication, and the ontogeny of behavior. In addition, this course examines the ecology of behavior, stressing the links between environmental factors, behavior, and resultant patterns of organismal distribution and abundance, including discussions of group formation, territoriality, dispersion, colonial breeding, and reproductive ecology. During the last part of the course, topics such as sexual selection, mating system evolution, parental care, kin selection, eusocial behavior, and human sociobiology are addressed. Laboratory work emphasizes hypothesis testing and the development of an independent project.

Prerequisite: BI 201 , and BI 242 ; or written permission of the instructor and Department Chair.