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Hello, what factors influence where and what an animal chooses to eat?

Why do some animals make for life while others are promiscuous?

Why do some species invest a lot of energy in producing a few offspring, while others produce young regularly throughout their lives.

These are the kinds of questions asked in behavioral ecology, the part of zoology concerned with the study of animal behavior.

The habeary ecology developed in the second half of the 20th century is a combination

of Darwin's theory of natural selection along with ideas drawn from game theory and the economics

of consumer choice.

Scientists had always been interested in why animals behaviors they do.

But before behavioral ecology, this area of science never got much beyond a collection of interesting anecdotes.

Behavioral ecology gave them techniques for constructing rigorous mathematical models

of how animals act under different circumstances and predicting how they will react if circumstances change.

Proponents say it revolutionized our understanding of animals in their environments.

With me to discuss behavioral ecology are Steve Jones, emeritus professor of genetics at

University College London, Rebecca Kilner, professor of Evolutionary

Biology at the University of Cambridge and John Krebs, principal of Jesus College and Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford.

Steve Jones, can you give us a summary of what behavioral ecology is and what the key ideas are?

Well you've just more honest on my job for me, really.

That summarizes pretty well what it is.

It's the scientific study of the interaction between animals

and their environment in the wider sense.

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