Animal Behavior Final Notes

1. What is light intensity? What is hue? What is chroma? Use the male cardinal as an example for each concept. Why is chroma especially important to the male cardinal? a. Intensity: how bright, how many photons hitting it hue: what domain of frequency chroma: how "pure" or saturated color is. Male cardinals use light to attract females 2. A colleague sends you a newly discovered marine fish species that is bright yellow with red accents. However, he forgot to tell you where the species was discovered. Based on its coloration alone, what type of ocean habitat would you expect this fish to live and why? b. You would expect the color of the ocean to be contrasting to the fish's colors. So you would find it in very blue/green waters like reefs 3. What property of light allows the lens in animal eyes to work? Give the definition of the property and an animal example. c. Light REFRACTION allows lenses to reflect the light in the back of the eye. Refraction is the bending of light as it passes through something with a different speed of light. Cats 4. You are a geneticist working with a team of other scientists to engineer an animal optimized for hunting at night (it is never active during the day). You have been tasked with creating the perfect eyes for this situation. What characteristics should you include to make the animal’s eyes optimal for this task? What are the drawbacks about this eye that the team should know about? d. Big eyes, MONOCHROMAT, TAPETUM, AND MORE RODS THAN CONES. Don't need split pupil because it doesn't hunt in the sun and will have less temporal/spatial activity 5. Another scientist on the team is working on the animal’s communication methods. If he needs the animal’s message to persist in the environment for a long time, what strategy should he pursue? What if he only cares about the message arriving as fast as it can? e. If he wants a message to persist for a long time, , the