BIONB 4220 - Modeling Behavioral Evolution

Fall. 4 credits. S-U or letter grade option.

Prerequisites: BIONB 2210, one year calculus, course in probability or statistics, and permission of instructor. Offered alternate years. Advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Computer lab TBA. Limited to 25 students.

H. K. Reeve.

Intensive lecture and computer lab course on modeling strategies and techniques in the study of behavioral evolution. Population-genetic (including quantitative-genetic), static optimization, dynamic programming, and game-theoretic methods are emphasized. These approaches are illustrated by application to problems in optimal foraging, sexual selection, sex ratio evolution, animal communication, and the evolution of cooperation and conflict within animal social groups. Students learn to critically assess recent evolutionary theories of animal behavior, as well as to develop their own testable models for biological systems of interest or to extend preexisting models in novel directions. The Mathematica software program is used as a modeling tool in the accompanying computer lab (no prior experience with computers required).