Course syllabus
Cut the crap and take me straight to the SCHEDULE
Welcome to Behavioural Biology!
Animal behaviours comprise the most complex gene-environment interactions in nature, and many of the most fascinating products of natural selection. The vibrant field of Behavioural Ecology tries to understand the 'endless forms' of social and sexual communication and organization, sex roles and parental care, predation and foraging, cooperation and altruism. The projection of evolutionary and behavioural ecology to human behaviour has created the young and rapidly growing field of Evolutionary Psychology, which also is the title of the primary and recently updated textbook that we use on the course.
Through a combination of lectures, group discussions and mini-projects, the main theme is to illustrate how behavioural and psychological traits and phenomena can be explored with regard to all of ‘Tinbergens four questions’; Mechanism, Ontogeny, Phylogeny, and Adaptation
COURSE LITERATURE (with summaries by ChatGPT)
SCHEDULE - VIEW or download (NB! Major changes to weeks 8 and 9 are only made in the Week modules!)
COURSE OVERVIEW & WEEK STRUCTURE
STUDENT PROFILING (click the title or here to go to the assignment)
We would greatly appreciate if you could update your contact details and, if you don't mind, provide some information about your background, interests and aims for this and future courses, not least your BSc and/or MSc degree projects.
A PHOTO of yourself (uploaded here) would also be much appreciated. Voluntary, of course, and will not be distributed outside this course
WEEKLY MODULES with updated weekly schedule, course material, the weekly quizzes, etc.
wk3 - Concepts & Tools
wk4 - Mechanisms & Ontogeny
wk5 - Survival
wk6 - Mating
wk7 - Parenting
wk8 - Mating Systems & Kinship
wk9 - Cooperation
wk10-Signals & Status
wk11 - Projects & Guest lecture
wk12 - Project Presentations
CHAPTER SEMINARS
Instructions for Chapter Chiefs and Seminars
Seminar Groups and Chapter Chief assignments
Project Group sign-up (1 or 2 students)
CONTACTS
Course coordinator:
Staffan Andersson staffan.andersson@bioenv.gu.se
0708-641959
Course admin (registration, logistics, results, etc):
studieadmin@bioenv.gu.se
Student counseling:
biology@bioenv.gu.se
LINKS
Student portal, University of Gothenburg
https://studentportal.gu.se/english/
Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences
https://bioenv.gu.se/english/
