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Syllabus for Behavioral Ecology, Bio 372, Fall 2012 – Subject to change

Class Time: Class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays 14:40 sharp to 16:00 in Ridgley 106, access by Eads Basement

Class teacher: Dr. Joan E. Strassmann, Office: 310 Wilson, Strassmann@wustl.edu Teaching Assistants: Devin Dobias, dobias@wustl.edu, Greg Sibbel, gsibbel@wustl.edu Office hours: Joan, by appointment, Devin before or after class, Greg after class, or all by appointment

Required Texts: The Selfish Gene, 3rd Edition, Richard Dawkins. This is a fun conceptual introduction to the topic. An introduction to behavioural ecology, FOURTH EDITION Nicholas Davies, John Krebs, Stuart West Wiley-Blackwell 2012 ISBN 978-1-4051-1416-5 Mockingbird Tales: Readings in Animal Behavior. This is written by former students and is available as a free PDF, or modestly priced book at http://cnx.org. Recommended for Writing: William Strunk, Jr., and E.B. White. The Elements of Style. 4th ed. New York: Allyn and Bacon, 2000. Bonnie Trenga, The curious case of the misplaced modifier. Writer’s Digest Books. 2006. Why take this course? This course is about understanding why organisms evolve to act the way they do. We focus on social behaviors and particularly on understanding conflict and cooperation. How do genetically distinct individuals cooperate while still favoring their own interests? We study things like the evolution of aggression, mating behavior, parental care, communication, and the complexities of living in groups and families. We will learn how natural selection operates on individuals in a social context. We study less material in more depth, with many videos. You will specialize in a certain area. In that area you will write for Wikipedia and teach high school students one Saturday. This class is a lot of work, a lot of fun, and you will never look at an animal in the same way. What will you learn? This course is about how animals behave in their environment. You will learn to be skeptical and critical and how to formulate and evaluate hypotheses. You will learn to evaluate material for accuracy in data, in logic, and in conclusions. You will understand the nature of scientific evidence. You will learn to understand how natural selection operates, particularly on behavior. One of the most effective ways of

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learning is to teach and communicate the material you just learned. In this class you will learn to teach, to write, to collaborate, and to engage in the dialogue of Wikipedia. Assignments: Weekly quizzes: You will have study questions over the textbook reading. There will be weekly quizzes based on these questions, on Mockingbird Tales, and on in-class material. Come to class. Participate. You may be called on at any time, like law school. You are responsible for all material covered in the class period as well as the assigned textbooks and readings. Some classes will be dedicated to discussion with your partners. The reading for each week should be done before class meets because discussion and application of ideas in class is important and will count on the daily quizzes. When we view animal behavior videos, you will complete short in-class assignments. Wikipedia: You will write a major entries that will be good enough to be posted on Wikipedia. This assignment is a major part of your grade and will be broken into many segments. Each person will do their own work, but you will work in teams of two or three where all work on a similar topic. One of the three will become a writing expert, one a fact checker, and if there are three in the group, one a Wikipedia expert. You will focus on one chapter from Chapter 3 to Chapter 13 in Davies, Krebs, and West, complementing this reading with reading original research papers, thereby making this your area of expertise. High school workshop: On the morning of Saturday 10 November, you will teach a workshop to high school students who will visit our campus. This is a required part of the course, so plan for it. The high school students will rotate among rooms with about half an hour in each. You will present a concept in about 10 minutes and complement it with an activity that illustrates the point for 20 minutes or so. This will be a group project. More details will come later. Extra credit: You may get extra credit by attending department seminars, by writing an extra Wikipedia biography on a female professor in behavioral ecology at another university who does not have a complete entry, by improving one of the chapters in Mockingbird Tales, or by doing the creativity workshop. Group work: You should work through the study questions on the reading with others. You may talk informally with others on any assignment and in studying for quizzes. References must be cited where pertinent; texts identical or very similar between students or unattributed statements will be violations. The high school presentation will be done together but you must provide a statement of who did what. Sign the honor code on all work (see below). Cheating, honesty, academic professionalism, and honor codes: An honor code means that students themselves police and judge the conduct of other students. Wash U does not have an honor code. Instead it has rules. You may not cheat, plagiarize, copy from others, fabricate data, or be deceitful in any way. This class fosters learning in an open, collegial, professional, goal-oriented environment. I see no place for professor-based policing, so I am going to teach this course in an honor-code based environment. You may not cheat in any way. You must put this pledge on all work: “I have neither given nor received any inappropriate assistance on this work.” Then sign it. I will appoint an honor council of three to handle all complaints, though I do not expect there to be any. The one thing I will keep careful track of is plagiarism, which I will use software to detect. Because we are posting our work, we cannot tolerate any plagiarism. Plagiarism occurs when someone takes the ideas, words, or sentences of another and passes it off as their own. It can be avoided by never using the exact or general structure of someone else, and by citing references when another’s ideas are used. Be vigilant and avoid plagiarism, and point it out if you see it in a paper draft. We will talk more about this later. It will not be allowed in any form. Late work: This course has much interactive work, so it is essential that all work be turned in early or on time. Last minute technical problems will not be considered an excuse. Back up your work and save while you work every 10 minutes. All work is due by a minute before midnight on the due date. Late work should have a written medical (including psychiatric) excuse from a health care professional that makes it clear that the problem precluded timely completion of the assignment. If illness prevents you from working with your study group, then the work done by the others is still due on time, and she/he must make the participation level of the ill person clear. Any work turned in late unexcused will lose as much as 5% of the points per day at my discretion. Work may be turned in early. You are required to keep copies of all work.

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Openness: Student work and comments will be posted in generally accessible places so students can learn from each other’s efforts. The actual grade on the work will be kept private. We have found that it can be very useful to see comments on other’s work as a way of improving your own. Overall rules: Wash U has policies about student and faculty involvement here. You may bring laptops and phones to class but the sound must be turned off. You may only use your laptop for class use. You may not check your email, Facebook, Reddit, or any use that is not class related. If you do, you will lose points that will severely impact your grade. Grading: Due Date: Item: Points: All semester Class participation 10 All semester Extra Credit 10* All semester Quizzes on reading for day 40 All semester Questions on videos 5 4 Sept. Test 1 on Dawkins 15 Detail below Wikipedia 60 10 Nov. Teach High School Students 20 Semester Total 150 *If you attend a relevant Departmental Seminar (Mondays in Rebstock 305 at 4 pm), Ecology, Evolution, and Population Biology Seminar (Thursdays at 4 pm in Rebstock 305) or any other relevant departmental seminar in any department and write up a brief commentary, you may use that to count for up to 10 points, a point each. You may also attend Bioforum, lab meetings, or special seminars. Check with us to be sure the event has behavioral ecology content. If it does not, it won’t count. The commentary should give the talk speaker’s name, title, date, place, and time. Then it should give the main thesis of the talk, and comments on what you did and did not like about the talk content and presentation style, in a page or less. It is due within 2 days of the presentation. You can only count 10 of these. They are extra credit. You may also write a biographical entry on Wikipedia of a female professor lacking a complete entry, or take the creativity workshop. Details later. ***All work is due no later than midnight on the date given, to the appropriate place on Blackboard. If you have a documented disability that will impact your work in this class please tell me according to Wash U rules. All students are responsible for information communicated through email, or through the course Blackboard website. Biology 372, Behavioral Ecology Week Dates Topic Readings Due Dates 1 28, 30

August Evolutionary approach to behavior

Dawkins 1-14 DKW 1 Natural Selection

2 4, 6 Sept. Hypothesis testing DKW 2 Testing hypotheses

6 Sept. Test on Dawkins

3 11, 13 Sept.

Resource competition

DKW 5 Resource competition 13 Sept. Create account on Wikipedia

4 18, 20 Sept.

Grouping DKW 6 Groups MT: Schooling in fish. MT: Sharks: solitary or group animals? MT: Alliance formation in bottlenose

dolphins. MT: The evolution of intergroup coalitionary

20 Sept. Join Wikiproject; review 5 existing pages

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aggression in humans. 5 25, 27

Sept. Sexual selection, sexual conflict

DKW 7 Sexual selection MT: The role of evolution in mating behavior

of lekking species. MT: To eat or to mate? Sexual cannibalism in

Mantodea and arachnid species MT: Violent mating: traumatic insemination

in bed bugs and other cimicids. MT: Sexual conflict and forced copulations

lead to the co-evolution of sexual organs in Anas platyrhynchos.

25 Sept. Edit existing entry adding 5 references and 500 words

6 2, 4 Oct. Parental care DKW 8 Parental care 7 9,11 Oct. Parent-offspring

interactions DKW 9 Mating systems 9 Oct. First draft

of major contribution, 10 references, 1000 words

8 16, 18 Oct.

Cooperative breeding

DKW 10 Sex allocation 16 Oct. Peer review of 3 first drafts

9 23, 25 Oct.

Evolution of altruism

DKW 11 Social behavior MT: A marine dwelling eusocial organism:

Synalpheus regalis. MT: Evolution of eusociality in Mole-rats

Prepare high school contributions

10 30 Oct., 1 Nov.

Cooperation DKW 12 Cooperation

11 6, 8 Nov.

Practice sessions for high school workshop

10 Nov. teach high school

12 13, 15 Nov.

Social insects DKW 13 Social insects .

15 Nov. Second draft of major contribution, 20 references, 2000 words

13 20 Nov. Social microbes Paper assigned later 20 Nov. Peer review of 3 entries, second draft

14 27, 29 Nov.

Communication DKW 14 Communication MT: Costs and benefits of non-predator

eavesdropping in mammal-bird alarm call interactions.

MT: Primate alarm calls. MT: Intra-species communication and

foraging in social insects.

25 Nov. respond to peer review nominate for Good Article status; 27 Nov Page promotion; did you know, add more links.

15 4, 6 Dec. Human behavior DKW 15, paper assigned later 6 December Final contribution of Wikipedia entries

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WIKIPEDIA ASSIGNMENT DEADLINES

Wikipedia due date and points table

In general, these assignments will be done live on Wikipedia. What you will submit to Blackboard will be copies of extensive texts and references, group information, and links to where you have made the live changes. For grading rubrics, see the entry on grading. Thoughtful, comprehensive, well-written, carefully linked work within the Wikipedia philosophy will be rewarded. You are free to contribute

more than required. You are free to modify and respond to comments more often than asked for here.

Document Deadline File Name Points 1.Create Account & User page; Create Sandbox

Thursday 13 Sept N/A

2.Join a Wikiproject; Review 5 existing Wikipedia pages

Thursday 20 September <LastName>PageReview.doc 50

3.Edit existing entry adding 5 references and 500 words

Tuesday, 25 September <LastName>WikiRevision.doc 100

4.First draft of WikiProject Contribution 10 references 1000 words

Tuesday 9 October

<LastName>IntialContribution.pdf

140

5. Peer review of 3 entries, first draft

Tuesday 16 October <LastName>PeerReview1.pdf 25

6.Second draft totaling 20 refs. and 2000 total words including previous 1000 nominate article for Good Article)

Thursday 15 Nov. <LastName>RevisedEntry.pdf 135

7. Peer review of 3 entries second draft

Tuesday 20 Nov. <LastName>PeerReview2.pdf 25

8. Respond to peer review, nominate for Good article

Sunday 25 Nov. <LastName>GoodArticle.pdf 25

9. Page promotion: new Articles: “Did you know” entry; Existing articles: adding links

Tuesday 27 Nov. <LastName>PagePromotion.pdf 50

10. Final Contribution (updates in response to reader feedback and talk page contributions to other students entries, response to GA article nomination)

Thursday 6 December <LastName>WikiFinalEntry.doc

50

The carrots mean you remove that bit, so StrassmannPageReview.doc only with your name.