This subject deals with four key areas of animal behaviour. Firstly, it examines the genetic regulation of behaviour, how behaviour evolves and how we can use comparative methods to study this process. Secondly, it focuses on the way in which behaviour develops during the animal's early life and the various influences that shape this development. Particular topics are foraging and anti-predator behaviour, social organisation, mating systems and parental care regimes. Finally, we investigate animal communication systems, with particular emphasis on how signals are produced, transmitted and received, their information content and how they are sometimes used in social manipulation.
Practical work comprises small research projects carried out in groups over several weeks.
You will learn how to design, carry out, analyse, talk about and write up such a project. The types of behaviour studied may include foraging, space use, aggression, communication and many others.