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Ellen Ketterson Professor of Biology |
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Jeff Alberts Professor of Psychology |
| C E N T E R F O R T H E I N T E G R A T I V E S T U D Y O F A N I M A L B E H A V I O R |
| F A L L 1 9 9 1 G R A D U A T E S E M I NA R |
| Parental Behavior (Z620) |
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Ellen Ketterson Professor of Biology |
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Jeff Alberts Professor of Psychology |
| PROSPECTUS . READINGS . CLASS SCHEDULE |
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C O U R S E D E S C R I P T I O N Z620, Special Topics in Zoology, can serve many purposes. In our case, we are using it as a vehicle for the Research Training Group (RTG) in the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior. The RTG offers a seminar each semester, and the seminar is intended to serve as the intellectual meeting ground for all participants in the RTG and to provide opportunities to meet with outside experts. We hope that all members of the RTG -- faculty, postdoctoral students and advanced graduate students, as well as students who are enrolled -- will participate actively in the seminar. (If you are a program student who has not yet completed 90 hours of academic credit, it is assumed that you will enroll.) This year's seminar is entitled Parental Behavior and Ontogenetic Transitions, and this autumn we will concentrate on parental behavior. When we formed the RTG, we made a commitment to studying functional behaviors, such as parental behavior, from a variety of academic perspectives, namely ecological and evolutionary, neurobiological, and learning and developmental. By comparing what can be learned from reductionist and synthetic approaches, as well as from different disciplinary traditions, we hope to produce in you the equivalent of hybrid vigor and to encourage you to make significant contributions to the field of animal behavior. We hope that you share some of our excitement at addressing the complex problems posed by the integrative study of animal behavior. Objectives Animal Behavior is a complex discipline that draws from many fields. A mixture of ethology, neurobiology, animal learning, and developmental psychology, it also incorporates ecology and evolutionary biology. It strives for a synthetic resolution to the questions of how and why animals behave the way they do. During this semester we hope to convey some of the accomplishments of animal behavior as well as its potential shortcomings and future directions by focussing on a particular form of behavior, parental behavior. We hope that by the time the course is over you will have become familiar with some of the leading workers in the field and be conversant with some of its classical foundations. We also hope that you will be aware of the controversies, able to pose solutions that are consistent with what is known to date, and able to state what further knowledge is needed in order to resolve controversies in the future. More specifically we hope to promote your ability to integrate evolutionary, ecological, and mechanistic explanations for animal behavior. Many people seem to believe that "how questions" are somehow separable from "why questions" and that each can be investigated independently. Sometimes this may be necessary in the short run. That is, we know very little about the genetic basis of complex social behaviors, yet most people are unwilling to forego studying the evolution of these behaviors until the genetic mechanisms are known. We can sympathize with this view. Others, however, think the mechanisms (or evolution) are irrelevant and we feel that this attitude is the one to be discouraged. Rather, we think the complexities, challenges, and ultimately answers lie in integration. For example, debate over the evolution of cooperative breeding in birds -- the situation where some individuals play a helping role, often in the rearing of younger siblings, in lieu of breeding themselves -- has been acrimonious at times. This is due in part to the personalities of the major players, but more fundamentally the controversy has been about the relative importance of kin selection (differential reproduction achieved via the reproductive success of relatives), as opposed to environmentally caused restrictions in opportunities to reproduce outside the group. One side argues that cooperative behavior is altruistic and could only have come about through kin selection. The other side argues that because cooperative breeding tends to occur in environments where breeding opportunities are rare, it may come about because young birds are forced to stay home, and since they are home anyway, they might as well help feed their siblings. How you react to this controversy is likely to be influenced by your reaction to the phrase, "they might as well help feed their siblings". Without knowing more of the mechanisms involved in parental behavior, it is not possible to know whether, given the constraints of the vertebrate neuroendocrine system, you can "build" a bird that will respond appropriately to its own young but can resist the begging behavior of siblings. When asking whether helping behavior is adaptive, one obviously needs to know how many offspring are produced with and without help, but, we would argue, one also needs to know how many fewer offspring a bird would raise if selection were to raise its threshold response to begging such that siblings would be ignored but offspring would be fed. Please think about this. This example was intended to portray how evolutionary biologists can benefit from studying mechanisms. As the semester proceeds, we will be looking for more examples of this type and also for examples of how students of mechanism can benefit from evolutionary thinking. One final objective of the seminar will be to ask ourselves constantly, "What it is that we want to know about animal behavior in general and parental behavior in particular?" Are we simply documenting variations on a theme? Do we study this subject simply because we like animals? Why is it in the interests of science or society to have a better understanding of why animals behave as they do? Format The seminar will be organized topically and highlighted with a series of guest speakers. Each topic will occupy two weeks: the first week will serve as an in-house preparatory session and the second week will consist of a guest-seminar plus a post-lecture meeting with the speaker(s). During week one, seminar participants will discuss a set of key papers provided by the guest speaker(s) to help prepare us for their visits. During week two, guest speakers will present a talk for a general audience during the afternoon. We will then break for dinner and meet again with the seminar speaker during the evening session. We will experiment twice with the idea of "double-headers", i.e., two guests on the same day. These double headers will take place at the beginning and the end of the semester. Visiting Guest Lecturers: We are fortunate that the following scholars have agreed to visit campus and meet with the class: Martin Daly (McMaster University), 16 September |
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R E A D I N G S READINGS to PREPARE for VISITORS: DALY Daly, M. and M. Wilson. 1988. The Darwinian psychology of discriminative parental solicitude. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 35:91-144. WINKLER Winkler, D. W. and G.S. Wilkinson. 1988. Parental effort in birds and mammals: Theory and measurement. In: P. Harvey and L. Partridge (Eds.), Oxford surveys in evolutionary biology, volume 5, pp. 185-214. Winkler, D.W. 1991. The causes and consequences of variation in parental defense behavior by tree swallows (Tachycineta bicolor). Submitted to The Condor. Winkler, D.W. 1987. A general model for parental care. American Naturalist 130: 526-543 (recommended, not required). GUBERNICK Gubernick, D. In press 1991. Biparental care and male female relations in mammals. Gubernick, D.J. 1990. A maternal chemosignal maintains paternal behaviour in the biparental California Mouse, Peromyscus californicus. Animal Behavior 39:936-942. Smuts, B.B. and D. J. Gubernick. In press 1991. Male-infant relationships in non-human primates: Paternal investment or mating effort? Dr. Gubernick has sent other reprints that will be in CISAB's office. [ N.B.: This reading list is for September only -- Readings for other speakers will be added soon. ] |
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F A L L 1 9 9 1 C L A S S S C H E D U L E Meeting Time: 7 pm - 9:30 pm, Mondays Location: Cleland Room (248), Jordan Hall Public Lectures: 4 pm, Mondays in Psychology, Room 101, with additional public talk for double headers at 12:20 pm in Psychology 101 Plus: Informal meetings with visiting speakers, TBA September 2 -- Organizational meeting September 9 -- Preparatory seminar (Ketterson) September 16 -- Speakers: Martin Daly / David Winkler September 23 -- Preparatory seminar September 30 -- Speaker: David Gubernick October 7 -- Preparatory seminar October 14 -- Speaker: Sue Carter October 21 -- Preparatory seminar October 28 -- Speaker: Glenn Hatton November 4 -- Preparatory seminar for Nov. 11 & 18(Ketterson) November 8 -- Speaker: Susan Foster November 11 -- Speaker: Mary McKitrick November 18 -- Speaker: George Barlow December 2 -- Preparatory seminar December 9 -- Speakers: Rae Silver / Greg Ball December 16 -- Summary and overview |
| R E L A T E D L I N K S CISAB Graduate Seminar Archive Alphabetical Guest Speaker Index CISAB Video Library  Visiting Speaker Comments Program in Animal Behavior Course Descriptions |
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