| A | B |
|---|
| Animal Behavior | Externally observable muscular activity triggered by some stimulus; what an animal does when interacting with its environment and how it does it. |
| Behavioral Biology | The use of scientific methods in the study of behavior. |
| Proximate Cause | In behavioral biology, the immediate explanation for an organism's behavior; the interactions of an organism with the environmental stimuli that trigger a behavioral response to an organism. |
| Ultimate Causes | In behavioral biology, the evolutionary explanation for an organism's behavior. |
| Behavioral Ecology | The scientific search for evolutionary bases of behavior. |
| Innate Behavior | Behavior that appears to be performed in virtually the same way by all members of a species. |
| Fixed Action Patterns (FAPs) | A genetically programmed, virtually unchangeable behavioral sequence performed in response to a certain stimulus. |
| Sign Stimulus | In animal behavior, a stimulus that triggers a fixed action pattern. |
| Learning | A behavioral change resulting from experience. |
| Imprinting | Learning that is limited to a specific critical period in an animal's life and that is generally irreversible. |
| Sensitive Period | A limited phase in an individual animal's development when learning of particular behaviors can take place. |
| Habituation | Learning not to respond to a repeated stimulus that conveys little or no information. |
| Associative Learning | Learning that a particular stimulus or response is linked to a reward or punishment; includes classical conditioning and trial-and-error learning. |
| Trial-and-error Learning | Learning to associate a particular behavioral act with positive or negative effect. |
| Imitation | Learning by observing and mimicking the behavior of others. |
| Cognition | The ability of an animal's nervous system to perceive, store, process, and use information obtained by its sensory receptors. |
| Cognitive Ethology | The scientific study of cognition; the study of the connection between data processing by nervous systems and animal behavior. |
| Consciousness | Awareness; a mental state characterized by conscious thinking and self-awareness. |
| Circadian Rhythms | In an organism, a biological cycle of about 24 hours that is controlled by a biological clock, usually under the influence of environmental cues; a pattern of activity that is repeated daily. |
| Kinesis | Random movement in response to a stimulus. |
| Taxis | Virtually automatic orientation toward or away from a stimulus. |
| Cognitive Map | A representation within the nervous system of spatial relations among objects in an animal's environment. |
| Migration | The regular back-and-forth movement of animals between two geographic areas at particular times of the year. |
| Landmarks | A point of reference for orientation during navigation. |
| Search Image | The mechanism that enables an animal to find a particular kind of food efficiently. |
| Optimal Foraging | Feeding behavior that provides maximal energy gain with minimal energy expense and minimal time spent searching for, securing, and eating food. |
| Social Behavior | Any kind of interaction between two or more animals, usually of the same species. |
| Sociobiology | The study of the evolutionary basis of social behavior. |
| Agonistic Behavior | Confrontational behavior involving a contest waged by threats, displays, or actual combat, which settles disputes over limited resources, such as food or mates. |
| Dominance Hierarchy | The ranking of individuals based on social interactions; usually maintained by agonistic behavior. |
| Territory | An area that an individual or individuals defend and from which other members of the same species are usualy excluded. |
| Signal | A behavior that causes a change in behavior in another animal. |
| Altruism | Behavior that reduces an individual's fitness while increasing the fitness of another individual. |
| Kin Selection | The concept that altruism evolves because it increases the number of copies of a gene common to a genetically related group of organisms; a hypothesis about the ultimate cause of altuism. |
| Reciprocal Altruism | In animal behavior, a selfless act repaid at a later time by the beneficiary or by another member of the beneficiary's social system. |
