BIO 375 - BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY AND SOCIOBIOLOGY

College of Arts & Sciences

Credit(s): 3

This course will explore the selective forces influencing animal behavior, such as foraging, predator avoidance, mate choice, parental care, and social interaction. Specific phenomena to be explored include the evolution of optimal foraging and search images, extravagant male characteristics, female preferences, conflicts between the sexes, infanticide, parent-offspring conflict, dominance hierarchies, optimal group size, altruism, and eusociality. The study of these behaviors integrates ideas and approaches from ecology, genetics, physiology, and psychology. Students will be encouraged to read outside material, to think carefully, logically, and critically about ideas and to ask questions and defend their views in class.

Prereq: A year of introductory biology (BIO 148/BIO 152).