Nonheritable Adaptive Behavior
Populations change through the process of evolution. Each individual in a population has a unique role in their particular environment. This role is commonly known as an ecological niche, and is simply how an organism lives in an environment in relation to others. Over successive generations, the organism must adapt to their surrounding conditions in order to develop their niche. An organism’s niche will evolve as changes in the external environment occur. The most successful species in nature are those that are able to use adaptive behaviors to build on prior knowledge, thereby increasing their overall knowledge bank. In turn, this will increase their overall survival and reproductive success.
Read more about this topic: Adaptive Behavior (ecology)
Famous quotes containing the words adaptive and/or behavior:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“Temperament is the natural, inborn style of behavior of each individual. It’s the how of behavior, not the why.... The question is not, “Why does he behave a certain way if he doesn’t get a cookie?” but rather, “When he doesn’t get a cookie, how does he express his displeasure...?” The environment—and your behavior as a parent—can influence temperament and interplay with it, but it is not the cause of temperamental characteristics.”
—Stanley Turecki (20th century)