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The expression of certain genes also affects animal behavior

Sometimes, the presence of certain chemicals in an area can affect animal behavior.

"Reef-dwelling species of damselfish and cardinalfish living near natural carbon dioxide (CO2) seeps and continuously exposed to the compound become less afraid of predators" (Munday, Cheal, Dixson, Rummer, & Fabricius, 2014).

"Flies with a defective copy of FOXP were found to take much longer making up their minds" (Quenqua 2014).

"Shamik DasGupta, an Oxford neuroscientist who was the study’s lead author, compared making a decision with a defective version of FOXP to trying to collect water in a leaky bucket. Before making decisions, brain circuits will gather information the way a bucket collects water. In healthy brains, a decision is made when the amount of information reaches a certain level. But when FOXP is defective, 'either the flow of information into the bucket is reduced to a trickle, or the bucket has sprung a leak'" (Quenqua, 2014).

"We found that living in an acidic environment makes small reef fish become attracted to the smell of their potential predators. Their sense of smell was acutely affected in CO2-rich waters in ways that gravely threaten their survival” (Munday, Cheal, Dixson, Rummer, & Fabricius, 2014).

Biology and Animal Behavior

How does biology influence animal behavior?

References

Neurological pathways also affect mood and behavior

"How an animal deals with stress is controlled by a part of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex, and the neurons in this part of the brain are known to change in structure and function in response to stressful situations" (Madhusoodanan 2014).

Akst, J. (2014, May 14). The infanticidal-to-paternal switch. The

Scientist.

Madhusoodanan, J. (2014, May 28). Depressed mice have

excitable neurons. Scientific American.

Munday, P. L., Cheal, A. J., Dixson, D. L., Rummer, J. L., & Fabricius,

K. E. (2014). Behavioral impairment in reef fishes caused by ocean acidification at CO2 seeps. Nature Climate Change. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2195

Quenqua, D. (2014, May 22). Even fruit flies need a moment to

think it over. New York Times, Science. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/science/even-fruit-flies-need-a-moment-to-think-it-over.html?ref=science&_r=1

  • Through various chemicals and hormones
  • Through behavioral conditioning and evolutionary adaptation
  • Through neurological signaling

"The researchers then looked at the animals' brains and found that a specific set of neurons in the prefrontal cortex were easily excitable in depressed mice, but much harder to excite in those resilient to the stress. Furthermore, artificially increasing the activity of these neurons caused mice that were once resilient to become susceptible to depressive behaviors. 'We were surprised that we were able to see a difference between depressed and resilient animals at the level of synaptic transmission,' says Li" (Madhusoodanan 2014)

Why is this important?

Certain pheromonal systems and parts of the brain influence behavior as well.

Studying what motivates animal behavior can give us important insights into the driving mechanisms of human behavior.

By Natalie Behrends

"animals exhibiting maternal or paternal care have a lot of activity in the MPOA. This was not surprising, given that a significant chunk of the literature had previously linked the brain region to parental behavior. To better characterize the neurons involved, the researchers screened for molecular markers and found that neurons active during parental care activities tended to express the neuropeptide galanin" (Akst 2014).

"The common link between fly and human mental activity appears to be FOXP, a gene that is closely associated with cognitive development and language in humans" (Quenqua).

"Ablation experiments demonstrated that knocking out the galanin neurons caused parental behavior to disappear in both male and female mice, and optogenetic studies showed that activating the neurons led to the emergence of parental behavior male mice expected to kill pups. 'From infantacidal behavior they are turning into loving dads,' said Dulac. 'That’s just fascinating. We found the right button to push to activate parental behavior'" (Akst 2014).

"The researchers have identified a 'critical pathway and brain area that seems to be important in resilience', says neurologist Helen Mayberg of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. If the same pathway is relevant in people, then the findings could point to ways to treat major depression, which affects around 7% of US adults in any one year" (Madhusoodanan 2014).

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