Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the second edition
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The evolution, development, and modification of behavior
- 2 Variation and selection: kineses
- 3 Reflexes
- 4 Direct orientation and feedback
- 5 Operant behavior
- 6 Reward and punishment
- 7 Feeding regulation: a model motivational system
- 8 The optimal allocation of behavior
- 9 Choice: dynamics and decision rules
- 10 Foraging and behavioral ecology
- 11 Stimulus control and cognition
- 12 Stimulus control and performance
- 13 Molar laws
- 14 Time and memory, I
- 15 Time and memory, II
- 16 Template learning
- 17 Learning, I
- 18 Models of classical conditioning
- 19 Learning, II
- 20 Learning, III: procedures
- 21 Comparative cognition
- Index
2 - Variation and selection: kineses
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2016
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the second edition
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The evolution, development, and modification of behavior
- 2 Variation and selection: kineses
- 3 Reflexes
- 4 Direct orientation and feedback
- 5 Operant behavior
- 6 Reward and punishment
- 7 Feeding regulation: a model motivational system
- 8 The optimal allocation of behavior
- 9 Choice: dynamics and decision rules
- 10 Foraging and behavioral ecology
- 11 Stimulus control and cognition
- 12 Stimulus control and performance
- 13 Molar laws
- 14 Time and memory, I
- 15 Time and memory, II
- 16 Template learning
- 17 Learning, I
- 18 Models of classical conditioning
- 19 Learning, II
- 20 Learning, III: procedures
- 21 Comparative cognition
- Index
Summary
The simpler the animal, the more we know about how it works: what makes it behave at all and what selects one behavior over others. This chapter illustrates the processes of variation and selection of individual behavior in some very simple cases – orientation mechanisms in plants and protists. The next chapter describes elementary processes such as habituation, adaptation, and the “laws” of reflex action, which are some of the ingredients of adaptive behavior in higher animals. Chapter 4 introduces the notion of feedback in connection with direct (taxic) orientation.
Simple orienting mechanisms
Finding the proper habitat, a place not too hot or cold, nor too dry or wet, safe from predators, and with a supply of food, is a major behavioral problem for all organisms. For simple, single-celled animals such as protists and primitive invertebrates, it is the main problem. Since these organisms possess either no or only the most rudimentary nervous system, they must get nourishment and stay safe using very simple means. Their simple orientation mechanisms exhibit the properties of adaptive behavior in its clearest form.
The movement of climbing plants provides a good illustration of the orientation problem, and of a simple solution to it. An important objective for any green plant is to gain maximum access to sunlight. Obstacles are presented by other plants with similar requirements. Where the need for light is not outweighed by other considerations, such as avoidance of predation or extremes of temperature or the effects of wind, plants therefore grow vertically and seek the highest, best-lighted point.
Darwin, an experimenter as well as a theorist, identified rotation of the growing plant tip (he called it circumnutation) as a key element in directed plant growth. He describes circumnutation in a hop plant:
When the shoot of a hop (Humulus lupulus) rises from the ground, the two or three first-formed, whilst very young, may be seen to bend to one side and to travel slowly round towards all points of the compass…From seven observations made during August…the average rate during hot weather and during the day is 2 hrs. 8 m. for each revolution…The revolving movement continues as long as the plant continues to grow; but each separate internode, as it becomes old, ceases to move.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Adaptive Behavior and Learning , pp. 24 - 37Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2016