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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 |
| S P R I N G 1 9 9 2 G R A D U A T E S E M I NA R |
| Ontogenetic Transitions (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 spring we will concentrate on ontogenetic transitions. When we formed the RTG, we made a commitment to studying functional behaviors, such as parental behavior, sexual behavior and mate choice, and orientation and migration. We also agreed that all behavior has a developmental component and much behavior is influenced by experience or learning. Hence these themes of development and learning underlie all our investigations of behavior. This semester we will focus on development per se. You the students in this seminar come from diverse backgrounds and differ in your interests. Some of you are evolutionary biologists and behavioral ecologists; others are interested in animal learning, developmental neuroanatomy, or child development. Your notions of why it is worthwhile to study behavior are likely to differ as well. Some of you may hope that a greater understanding of behavior may help preserve biodiversity; others may hope to contribute to the improvement of the educational process in humans, which should lead to a better society. By comparing what can be learned from reductionist and synthetic approaches, as well as from different disciplinary traditions and motivations, 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. Objectives The major objective of this seminar is to promote your ability to integrate evolutionary, ecological, and mechanistic explanations for animal behavior. Many people still seem to think that "how questions" are somehow separable from "why questions" and that each can be investigated independently. Rather, we think the complexities, challenges, and ultimately answers lie in integration. However, we aren't necessarily born integrative, so we need help in doing this. Hence our fundamental objective is to expand your capacity to frame questions integratively. Another major objective of the seminar (and the Research Training Group for that matter) is to direct our attention toward important problems in animal behavior. Overspecialization and narrow framing of questions is something to be avoided, but it's not always so easy. How do we recognize an important question when we see one? How do we keep from devoting tremendous energy to solving uninteresting problems? One way to do this is to ask yourself constantly, (1) "What it is that we want to know about animal behavior in general and development in particular?" and (2) "Why is it in the interests of science or society to have a better understanding of why animals behave as they do?" This kind of self-examination is essential to doing work that matters. Another way to identify important problems is to talk to people with different training in order to see whether they can be made to see why a particular question is interesting. If this requires that you teach them some background in order for them to see the importance, that's OK. But if they still fail to see the point after having been provided with the background, perhaps the question is not really so interesting after all. Because this seminar is interdisciplinary, it should facilitate constructive examination of the questions posed by others. Grading Your grade in this course will derive from the following: your participation in discussion, including your ability to explain parts of the assigned papers to other students, and your willingness to pose questions or interact in other ways with the speakers. You may be asked to do short written assignments (homework) from time to time. 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 speaker to help prepare us for their visits. We may also do some general reading in the area represented by the speaker or read a paper by someone with an opposing point of view. During the preparatory session we will generate questions to put to the speakers during their visits. If we think that the speakers need an opportunity to prepare for these questions, we will FAX them copies of the questions in advance. During week two, guest speakers will be available for individual meetings with students and they will present a talk for a general audience during the afternoon. We will then break for dinner and meet with the seminar speaker as a group during the evening session. As the semester progresses, we will use the weeks intervening between speakers to do a retrospective evaluation of the last speaker as well as to prepare for the upcoming speaker. We will see how this works out, but as an initial guideline, the first hour of the session may be spent discussing issues raised the previous week. We can then take a brief break (for refreshments?) and start in on the next week's papers. There will be exceptions to the format. In-house people (e.g., Rudy Raff from Biology) will not present afternoon talks. Some speakers are not preceded by a week of preparation because their schedules could not conform to ours. For them (e.g., Adkins-Regan) we will need to prepare in advance. Some dates are still open as we wait for people to determine whether they will be able to make it. Visiting Guest Lecturers: We are fortunate that the following scholars have agreed to visit campus and meet with the class: Dale Sengelaub (Psychology / Neural Science, IU), 27 January |
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R E A D I N G S READINGS to PREPARE for VISITORS: [ N.B.: Readings for speakers will be added soon. ] |
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S P R I N G 1 9 9 2 C L A S S S C H E D U L E Meeting Time: 7 pm - 9:30 pm, Mondays On the weeks when we have outside speakers, class will meet from 7:30-10 pm in order to give the speakers and their hosts sufficient time to eat dinner. Location: Seminar Room, Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior (CISAB) 402 N. Park Avenue (corner of 8th & Park) Public Lectures: 4 pm, Mondays in Psychology, Room 109, except for Raff (24 Feb) seminar meeting only; and Nottebohm (6 Apr) whose seminars will be in Jordan Hall A100 Plus: Informal meetings with visiting speakers, TBA January 13 -- Organizational meeting, intro by Ketterson & Alberts January 20 -- Readings: Bateson, Arnold, and West-Eberhard January 27 -- Speaker: __ February 3 -- Preparatory seminar for Moore February 10 -- Speaker: Michael Moore February 17 -- Preparatory seminar for R. Raff February 24 -- Speaker: Rudy Raff March 2 -- Preparatory seminar for Hall and Adkins-Regan March 9 -- Speaker: Ted Hall March 16 -- SPRING BREAK March 23 -- Speaker: Elizabeth Adkins-Regan March 30 -- Preparatory seminar for Nottebohm April 6 -- Speaker: Fernando Nottebohm April 13 -- Preparatory seminar for Gilbert Gottlieb April 20 -- Speaker: Gilbert Gottlieb April 17 -- Summary and overview |
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