List of top Behavioural Ecology Questions asked in GATE EY

The ethologist Konrad Lorenz is known for his discovery of which one of the following processes?
Male stickleback fish develop red colour on their ventral side in the breeding season and maintain territories. When a conspecific male intruder enters their territory, resident males perform an aggressive display. The ethologist Niko Tinbergen presented models of different shapes to territorial male stickleback fish. He found that models of any shape elicited aggressive displays, provided the ventral part of the models was coloured red. This observation led to the development of which one of the following concepts?
Neuronal circuits that mediate escape responses in animals would perform best if they had which one of the following combination of properties?
In cooperatively breeding animals, offspring from one year stay back and help their parents to rear offspring born in successive breeding episodes. Kin selection has been used to explain such helping behaviour. Which of the following support the kin selection hypothesis?

In a species of gecko, males are polymorphic such that some males are yellow and other males are white. A student hypothesises that body colour is a signal of aggression. To test this, he measures aggression in yellow and white males. He also measures body size in every individual he tests. He plots the data in the following way (yellow males: solid line and filled dots; white males: dashed line and open dots). Which one of the following statements is correct based on these data? 
 

Male beetles are of two phenotypes: horned and hornless. Horned males mate with twice as many females compared with hornless males. But females mated to hornless males produce one-third more offspring. The reproductive success of a male (number of offspring fathered) is the number of females he mates with multiplied by the number of offspring each female produces. The reproductive success of horned males is \(\underline{\hspace{1cm}}\) times that of hornless males. (Round off to one decimal place.)
The egg-laying mammal, platypus, is known for its ability to inject venom by stabbing with spurs on its hindlimbs. Which one (or more) of the following statements supports the hypothesis that venom in this species is used for intrasexual competition?
Behavioural ecologists exploring a newly discovered island find 20 new species of terrestrial lizards. Males of these species have a dorsal ridge that varies in size from large in some species to entirely lacking in others. The scientists hypothesise that dorsal ridges in males evolved by runaway sexual selection stemming from sensory bias in females. Which one of the following would provide the necessary evidence to support this hypothesis?
Homing pigeons can perceive the pattern of polarized light in the sky (which depends on the position of the sun relative to the earth). This enables homing pigeons to orient and navigate home if released in any location. One can reset their biological clock in captivity by artificially controlling the light conditions. If you acclimatize a pigeon to a new lighting cycle with "sunrise" at 6 PM and "sunset" at 6 AM, instead of 6 AM sunrise and 6 PM sunset that naturally occurs, the bird will be clock-shifted by 12 hours within a few days. Suppose you release two birds, a normal bird (N) and a 12-hr clock-adjusted bird (C), 30 km East of their home at 6 AM. In which direction will each bird fly?
Listed below are hypotheses for the evolution of monogamy. Which one of these is NOT based on the concept of individual selection?
The marginal value theorem in optimal foraging theory examines which one of the following foraging decisions?
Animal species can vary in whether dispersal is more likely among male offspring (male-biased), female offspring (female-biased), or similar between the sexes. Dispersal in birds and mammals is most commonly: