Laboratory Activities in Animal Behavior at Austin College


The laboratory involves a variety of activities that are designed to acquaint you with more practical aspects of the study of animal behavior. The main activity will be a series of field trips, whose purpose will be to make qualitative observations and collect quantitative data on the behavior and ecology of a variety of animal species. The standard operating procedure for field labs will be for us to meet very briefly in MS 323 to collect our gear for the day, then to meet at the vehicle in the parking lot north of Baker Hall. Some labs will be indoors, and will be held in MS 323, unless otherwise noted. We will devote some time in either lecture or laboratory to analysis and interpretation of the data that we collect. You will write a brief report on the theory and questions addressed, the methods used, the results generated, and conclusions drawn, for five of the lab exercises (worth 30 points each).

Lab reports: The format of the lab reports is described in a separate document. The brief version is that the lab reports will begin with a brief but informative title, your name, the date of submission, and your campus box number. After that comes the body of the text, which will be an Introduction, a Methods section, the Results, and a Discussion. I will provide input and guidance on what goes into the lab reports; there will be more guidance earlier in the semester than later.

The laboratory activities will not follow the lectures very closely, partly because it is difficult to demonstrate all of the behaviors that we will discuss in lecture, and partly because of constraints on availability of animals to study in the field. Because of this discrepancy, each week I will distribute a description of the laboratory activity for the following week. In some cases, our laboratory activities may be spontaneous, because we find something interesting happening in the field. In these cases we must be prepared to alter our planned activity to fit a new situation (adaptive modification of behavior). Each of you may have ideas about what we should do and how we should do it - I am always open to constructive criticism of my methods and ideas. You should voice your questions and opinions freely.

My plan for our first lab is to begin to develop our skills as observers of animal behavior. This will entail a variety of activities, including such simple things as using binoculars, estimating distances between objects, counting numbers of individuals, and learning about habitat characteristics. We will also practice describing behavioral states, events, and bouts, and learn what to look for while observing behavior. We will practice using two or three different sampling techniques to generate our observations. Our second lab will be a more rigorous set of qualitative and quantitative observations in which we compare microhabitat preferences of a group of phylogenetically closely related species. After that we have a series of lab exercises that examine in some detail a variety of aspects of behavior; what we actually end up doing depends in part on what the local animal species are doing.



Tentative Laboratory Schedule - 2009

Mon 7 Sept     Behavior sampling techniques – Hagerman National Wildlife Refuge

Mon 14 Sept    Observing the behavior and ecology of birds in the field – Hagerman NWR (see also Wading Bird Foraging Behavior)

Mon 21 Sept    Basics of Vertebrate Neurobiology

Mon 28 Sept    Pollinator behavior and ecology – Sneed Environmental Research Area

Mon 5 Oct    Seed-harvester ant foraging behavior – Sneed Environmental Research Area
   
Mon 12 Oct    Human personal space – AC Campus  

Mon 19 Oct    EXAM 2

Mon 26 Oct    Small mammal behavior and ecology – Sneed ERA  

Mon 2 Nov    Human mate preference – AC Campus

Mon 9 Nov    EXAM  3
   
Mon 16 Nov    Waterfowl visual and vocal displays – Hagerman NWR

Mon 23 Nov    Free day for data analysis and writing individual project manuscripts

Mon 30 Nov    Individual research project oral reports

Mon 7 Dec     Individual research project oral reports