BIOL 370 - ANIMAL BEHAVIOR LABORATORY

SYLLABUS

INSTRUCTOR: Dr. Michael Carey
OFFICE: Loyola Hall 120
PHONE: 941-7544 (office), 575-5293 (cell)
EMAIL: careym1@uofs.edu
OFFICE HOURS: 10:00-12:00 MW or by appt.
CLASS HRS: 8:00-10:00 W - Loyola 021
TEXT: None, instructions and handouts will be distributed for each exercise

TENTATIVE LECTURE SCHEDULE

DATE                  TOPIC
-------------------------------------------------------
Jan 30     Introduction, behavioral observation,
                analysis

Feb 6      Behavioral observation - free ranging crickets

Feb 13     Human mate choice

Feb 20     Observational design - human behavior
                                          
Feb 27     Prey location in squirrels

Mar 5      Diet choice in squirrels

Mar 12     Open

Mar 23     SPRING BREAK

Mar 26     Jewel wasp feeding and sex ratio

Apr 2      Robin foraging behavior

Apr 9      Red-winged blackbird observation guidelines

Apr 16     Red-winged blackbird territoriality
               and courtship

Apr 23     Red-winged blackbirds continued

Apr 30     Red-winged blackbirds continued

May 7      Red-winged blackbirds, if necessary

COURSE POLICIES

OBJECTIVES: The main objectives of this course are to have you learn to observe, describe, and minimally experiment with the real behaviors of animals, in both a proximate and ultimate sense. The first 3 weeks are an introduction to observation and analytic techniques. Next is a series of exercises done mainly in the lab. Red-wnged blackbird observations at the end of the semester are done in the field. For better results, these field labs will start at 7:00 AM. The labs are time consuming; thus it is important that you arrive on time. Tardiness could affect your grade negatively.

While I do not take attendance, I do notice people who are excessively absent from class. Such excessive absences may also reflect negatively on your final class grade (See grading policy).

EXAM POLICY: There are no exams.

GRADING POLICY: The final letter will be determined as follows:

15 pts - based on 3 short reports answering specific questions or summarizing results from the 3 introductory weeks' labs

13 pts - a research paper based on the human behavior observations

18 pts - a research paper on squirrel feeding behavior

18 pts - a research paper on the jewel wasp experiments

18 pts - a research paper on robin foraging behavior

18 pts - a research paper on the red-winged blackbird observations

Letter grade cutoffs are as follows: 90-A, 80-B, 70-C, 60-D.

Since this is a writing intensive course, I expect that your science writing will get better as the semester goes on. Thus my grading of the quality of your papers will become more severe as the semester goes on too. Mistakes on the early papers will not cost you as much as mistakes on the later ones. Papers will be graded on their adherence to the rules of science research writing and style, organization, spelling, grammatical quality, etc.

Criteria such as class attendance, participation, and interest will be used to determine the of the grade of students that end up on or near a borderline.