behavioral isolation

Examples of behavioral isolation in the following topics:

• Reproductive Isolation

  • Reproductive isolation, through mechanical, behavioral, and physiological barriers, is an important component of speciation.
  • Reproductive isolation is a collection of mechanisms, behaviors, and physiological processes that prevent the members of two different species that cross or mate from producing offspring, or which ensure that any offspring that may be produced is not fertile.
  • Differences in breeding schedules, called temporal isolation, can act as a form of reproductive isolation.
  • Behavioral isolation occurs when the presence or absence of a specific behavior prevents reproduction from taking place.
  • These two related frog species exhibit temporal reproductive isolation.

• The Levels of Classification

  • Subspecies are members of the same species that are capable of mating and reproducing viable offspring, but they are considered separate subspecies due to geographic or behavioral isolation or other factors.

• Allopatric Speciation

  • The nature of the geographic separation necessary to isolate populations depends entirely on the biology of the organism and its potential for dispersal.
  • Consider the two owls: in the north, the climate is cooler than in the south causing the types of organisms in each ecosystem differ, as do their behaviors and habits.
  • In some cases, a population of one species disperses throughout an area with each finding a distinct niche or isolated habitat.
  • Island archipelagos like the Hawaiian Islands provide an ideal context for adaptive radiation events because water surrounds each island which leads to geographical isolation for many organisms.

• Introduction to Animal Behavior

  • Behavior is the change in activity of an organism in response to a stimulus.
  • Behavioral biology is the study of the biological and evolutionary bases for such changes.
  • One goal of behavioral biology is to distinguish the innate behaviors, which have a strong genetic component and are largely independent of environmental influences, from the learned behaviors, which result from environmental conditioning.
  • Innate behavior, or instinct, is important because there is no risk of an incorrect behavior being learned.
  • These behaviors are “hard wired” into the system.

• External and Internal Fertilization

  • Pairs of fish that are not broadcast spawners may exhibit courtship behavior.
  • The embryo is isolated within the female, which limits predation on the young.

• Pharmacogenomics, Toxicogenomics, and Metagenomics

  • Traditionally, microbiology has been taught with the view that microorganisms are best studied under pure culture conditions, which involves isolating a single type of cell and culturing it in the laboratory.
  • In addition, the vast majority of bacterial species resist being cultured in isolation.
  • Most microorganisms do not live as isolated entities, but in microbial communities known as biofilms.
  • Metagenomics involves isolating DNA from multiple species within an environmental niche.

• Altruism and Populations

  • Behaviors that lower the fitness of the individual engaging in the behavior, but increase the fitness of another individual, are termed altruistic.
  • Examples of such behaviors are seen widely across the animal kingdom.
  • There has been much discussion over why altruistic behaviors exist.
  • Thus, there is reciprocity in the behavior.
  • This behavior is still not necessarily altruism, as the "giving" behavior of the actor is based on the expectation that it will be the "receiver" of the behavior in the future; a concept termed reciprocal altruism.

• Simple Learned Behaviors

  • Simple learned behaviors include habituation and imprinting, both of which are important to the maturation process of young animals.
  • The majority of the behaviors discussed in previous sections are innate or at least have an innate component.
  • In other words, variations on the innate behaviors may be learned.
  • Innate behaviors are inherited and do not change in response to signals from the environment.
  • Simple learned behaviors include habituation and imprinting, both of which are important to the maturation process of young animals.

• Conditioned Behavior

  • In classical conditioning, a behavior is paired with an unrelated stimulus; in operant conditioning, behaviors are modified by consequences.
  • Conditioned behaviors are types of associative learning where a stimulus becomes associated with a consequence.
  • Classical conditioning is a major tenet of behaviorism, a branch of psychological philosophy that proposes that all actions, thoughts, and emotions of living things are behaviors that can be treated by behavior modification and changes in the environment.
  • In operant conditioning, the conditioned behavior is gradually modified by its consequences as the animal responds to the stimulus.
  • In this way, the animal is conditioned to associate a type of behavior with the punishment or reward.

• Movement and Migration

  • Innate behaviors, such as kinesis, taxis, and migration, are instinctual responses to external stimuli.
  • Innate or instinctual behaviors rely on response to stimuli.
  • Even humans, with our great capacity to learn, still exhibit a variety of innate behaviors.
  • Another activity or movement of innate behavior is kinesis: undirected movement in response to a stimulus.
  • Another example is klinokinesis, an increase in turning behaviors.