Animals, during their lives, are almost constantly faced with behavioural decisions. For instance, in a given time, should an animal forage or rest? If foraging, where should it go to eat? What type of food to pursue? Feed alone or join others? Which mate to choose? Fight rivals or run away? How many offspring to produce? Whether to care for the young or desert? One central goal of behavioural studies is to study what are the factors that influence these behavioural decisions. Since the situations in which individuals have to make a decision cover virtually all aspects of behaviour, in the past decades new fields emerged to deal with different sets of questions. For example, individual decisions during the foraging are analysed by the Optimal Foraging Theory (Stephens & Krebs 1986), Game Theory is extensively used in the examination of the social decisions, i.e. when the outcome of the individuals' choice depends on the behaviour of their companions (Maynard Smith 1982) and strategic decisions over the lifetime of the organisms are discussed by the Life History Theory (Stearns 1992). Behavioural Ecology, by integrating the ideas of evolution, ecology and behavioural studies, provides a common, general framework for all these analyses (Krebs & Davies 1997) in order to seek the adaptive value of behaviour; i.e. to investigate what the fitness consequences are of a certain behavioural decision.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CCSD/oai:tel.archives-ouvertes.fr:tel-00326877 |
| Date | 06 July 2006 |
| Creators | Lendvai, Adam Zoltan |
| Source Sets | CCSD theses-EN-ligne, France |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PhD thesis |
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