Evolution (or phylogeny): How did the behaviour evolve? How has natural selection modified the behaviour over evolutionary time? This is typically addressed by the comparative approach, where the behaviour in question is compared among closely related species.its survival and reproduction)? Examples are plentiful and include, among many others, nurturing of young to increase their chance of survival, migration to warmer (and more food rich) habitats, escaping or avoiding attention from predators etc. Function (or adaption): Why is the animal performing the behaviour? In which way does the behaviour increase the animal’s fitness (i.e.The lasting contribution of the paper is that in it Tinbergen formulated four different, albeit somewhat interlinked, approaches to the study of animal behaviour, or four different types of questions we can ask about an observed behaviour. In 1963 Niko Tinbergen published a seminal paper entitled ‘On the aims and methods of ethology’, which laid the foundation for how to conduct research in the fledging field of animal behaviour.
Licensed by Dan Dzurisin under the Creative CommonsĪttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) licence The Greater sage grouse ( Centrocercus urophasianus) from North America displaying on its lek
