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Related Concept Videos

Types of Selection01:46

Types of Selection

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Natural selection influences the frequencies of particular alleles and phenotypes within populations in several different ways. Primarily, natural selection can be directional, stabilizing, or disruptive. Directional selection favors one extreme trait and shifts the population towards that phenotype while selecting against individuals displaying alternate traits. Stabilizing selection favors an intermediate trait with a narrow range of variation. Deviation from the optimal phenotype towards an...
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What is Behavior?00:54

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Behaviors are actions that an organism engages in—they can be related to finding food, reproducing, defending against threats, and many other possible actions. Behaviors include activities related to the environment around the animal—such as migration—as well as social interactions within a species or population. Many behaviors involve motor output—that is, muscle movements—while others involve less visible actions, such as learning.
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What is Natural Selection?01:32

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Natural selection is an evolutionary process in which individuals with survival-promoting traits reproduce at higher rates. These favorable traits become more common within a population or species. Naturally selected traits initially arise via random genetic mutations. In order for selection to occur, there must be variation within a population, the trait controlling the variation must be heritable, and there must be an evolutionary advantage for variation in the trait.
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Instinctive drift refers to the tendency of animals to revert to their innate behaviors despite repeated reinforcement. Breland and Breland demonstrated this concept in an experiment with a raccoon. The raccoon was trained to pick up two coins and place them in a container in exchange for food. Initially, the raccoon learned to associate the coins with food, making them a conditioned stimulus or a substitute for food. However, over time, the raccoon became less willing to put the coins into the...
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Frequency-dependent Selection01:21

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When the fitness of a trait is influenced by how common it is (i.e., its frequency) relative to different traits within a population, this is referred to as frequency-dependent selection. Frequency-dependent selection may occur between species or within a single species. This type of selection can either be positive—with more common phenotypes having higher fitness—or negative, with rarer phenotypes conferring increased fitness.
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Mate Choice01:20

Mate Choice

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Mate choice—the decision about whom to mate with—is a type of natural selection, since animals must reproduce to pass down their genes. Mate choice is also called intersexual selection because the behavior occurs between the sexes.
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Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats
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Goats (Capra hircus) From Different Selection Lines Differ in Their Behavioural Flexibility.

Christian Nawroth1, Katrina Rosenberger2, Nina M Keil2

  • 1Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology, Institute of Behavioural Physiology, Dummerstorf, Germany.

Frontiers in Psychology
|February 18, 2022
PubMed
Summary

Dairy goats selected for high milk yield showed reduced behavioral flexibility in learning tasks compared to dwarf goats. This suggests production selection may impact adaptability, potentially affecting animal welfare in changing environments.

Keywords:
animal cognitiondiscrimination learningfarm animalsreversal learningungulates

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Area of Science:

  • Animal behavior and cognition
  • Domestication and artificial selection
  • Animal welfare science

Background:

  • Domestication and artificial selection can alter animals' cognitive abilities and behavioral flexibility.
  • Selection for specific traits, like high productivity, may reallocate resources, impacting learning performance.
  • Understanding these effects is crucial for animal welfare, especially in changing environments.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if dairy goats selected for high milk yield exhibit lower learning performance and behavioral flexibility compared to non-production-selected dwarf goats.
  • To assess the impact of artificial selection for productivity on cognitive adaptability in domestic animals.

Main Methods:

  • Compared visual discrimination learning and reversal learning task performance between dairy goats (n=18) and dwarf goats (n=15).
  • Goats were tested individually, learning to choose rewarded cups.
  • Performance was measured by the number of sessions to reach learning criteria in initial and reversal tasks.

Main Results:

  • Both goat groups performed similarly in the initial discrimination learning task.
  • Dairy goats required significantly more sessions (9.18) than dwarf goats (7.74) to reach the criterion in the reversal learning task (P=0.016).
  • This indicates reduced behavioral flexibility in dairy goats when adapting to changing stimuli.

Conclusions:

  • Artificial selection for high milk production in dairy goats may negatively affect their behavioral flexibility and ability to adapt to changing environmental stimuli.
  • These cognitive shifts could have implications for animal welfare, particularly when goats face new situations or management changes.
  • Further research is needed to fully understand the link between production traits and cognitive adaptability in livestock.