📗 -> 01/09/25: NPB162-L2
🎤 Vocab
❗ Unit and Larger Context
Continued FAP, fixed action patterns
✒️ -> Scratch Notes
Background:
Herring Gull Chicks Use a red spot on the bill as a sign stimulus to recognize their mother. When they start pecking at it it indicates hunger. In turn, the parents gorge out food to feed their child (even newborns do this)
Testing the response of chicks, a stick with a red dot was surprisingly the most successful, more so than a puppet head.
- This is a supernormal stimulus. More effective than normal.
- It abuses the features that normally induce behavior, yellow cylinder with red on it.
Law of Heterogeneous Summation
The successive presentation of the individual components of a model elicits the same response as their simultaneous presentation in a combined model.
- The idea of making a model a linear combination of features
Gestalt Principle
The whole is more than the sum of its parts
To perceive the true form, one must not only consider the elements but also the relationships between the elements.
FAP Ex)
Three Spined Stickleback
During mating season, males will develop a male underbelly.
In experiments, objects that weren’t fish shaped but painted with red on their lower halves incited aggression from real males.
- Behavior: Male mating agression
- Proximate Cause:
Yawning exercise afterwards
Orienting Movements
Animals orient their body in a specific way relative to the environment
Animals need to be able to “sense” something about their environment
Sensory System - The portion of the nervous system (NS) responsible for processing input from the environment
- Sensing can happen without an NS or specialized sensory neurons too (unicellular organisms)
Taxis
Taxis - Orienting reaction or movement in freely moving organisms in a particular direction with respect to a stimulus
- Can be positive (towards) or negative (away) from a stimulus
- Ex: Positive phototaxis
Anemotaxis: Orienting movement in relation to the wind direction.
Chemotaxis: Orienting movement triggered by a chemical stimulus.
Galvanotaxis: Orienting movement with an electric current acting as a directing stimulus.
Geotaxis: Orienting movement in reference to gravity.
Phonotaxis: Orienting movement elicited by an acoustic stimulus.
Rheotaxis: Orienting movement directed by the current of water.
Thermotaxis: Orienting movement induced by temperature.
Thigmotaxis: Orienting movement with a rigid surface acting as a directing force.
Phototaxis: Orienting movement induced by light.
Paramecium Caudatum
- Mediates movement through its cilia
- Since a bubble of CO2 is surrounded by a pH gradient, increasing from its centers
- Low pH can indicate CO2, and following the high->low gradient can lead to it
- Paramecium are attracted to weak acids, and repelled by alkaline (high pH) solutions
- They tend to remain in an optimal pH zone
- Meaning?
- Adaptation to feeding behavior?
Kinesis
Kinesis - a non-directional change in activity in response to a stimulus. The animal’s body is not oriented with respect to the source of stimulation.
Taxis vs Kinesis: Taxis is directed orientation, kinesis is indirect, no directional bias
🧪 -> Refresh the Info
Did you generally find the overall content understandable or compelling or relevant or not, and why, or which aspects of the reading were most novel or challenging for you and which aspects were most familiar or straightforward?)
Did a specific aspect of the reading raise questions for you or relate to other ideas and findings you’ve encountered, or are there other related issues you wish had been covered?)
🔗 -> Links
Resources
- Put useful links here
Connections
- Link all related words