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The brain: For example, Broca's area, a small section of the human brain, has a critical role in linguistic capability. Hormones: Chemicals used to communicate among cells of an individual organism. Testosterone, for instance, stimulates aggressive behaviour in a number of species.
Adaptation affects all aspects of the life of an organism. [24] The following definitions are given by the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky: 1. Adaptation is the evolutionary process whereby an organism becomes better able to live in its habitat or habitats. [25] [26] [27] 2.
For example, the adaptation of horses' teeth to the grinding of grass. By using the term adaptation for the evolutionary process and adaptive trait for the product (the bodily part or function), the two senses of the word may be distinguished. Adaptations are produced by natural selection. [152]
There are many environmental examples of sexual selection as an adaptive behavior; one popular example is sexual dimorphism. Sexual dimorphism is a morphological, phenotypic difference between males and females of the same species. [20] A common example of sexual dimorphism is difference in body size. [20]
Phenotypic plasticity refers to some of the changes in an organism's behavior, morphology and physiology in response to a unique environment. [1] [2] Fundamental to the way in which organisms cope with environmental variation, phenotypic plasticity encompasses all types of environmentally induced changes (e.g. morphological, physiological, behavioural, phenological) that may or may not be ...
Behavioral ecology, also spelled behavioural ecology, is the study of the evolutionary basis for animal behavior due to ecological pressures. Behavioral ecology emerged from ethology after Niko Tinbergen outlined four questions to address when studying animal behaviors: What are the proximate causes, ontogeny, survival value, and phylogeny of a behavior?
Trophallaxis: eating food regurgitated by another animal; Zoopharmacognosy: self-medication by eating plants, soils, and insects to treat and prevent disease. An opportunistic feeder sustains itself from a number of different food sources, because the species is behaviourally sufficiently flexible.
The co-operative behaviour of social insects like the honey bee can be explained by kin selection.. Kin selection is a process whereby natural selection favours a trait due to its positive effects on the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even when at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. [1]