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In ethology, an ethogram is a catalogue of the discrete behaviors typically employed by a species. These behaviors are sufficiently stereotyped that an observer may record the number of such acts, or the amount of time engaged in the behaviours in a time budget.
Rooted in traditions which focus on discrete species-typical innate behaviors, ethograms represent an early stage of investigating the behaviors of a species and the contexts in which they occur. Difficulties in compiling ethograms include rarely performed behaviors, graded displays, inter-individual variation and non-stereotyped behaviors, all of which introduce ambiguities into the lexicon-like concept of an ethogram.
The behaviors are described (e.g. sit-on-haunches) without explicit reference to their purpose (e.g. predator-scanning). A species may use a putative threat display, which ought to be given a descriptive name such as "head forward" or "bracing display", and not "head forward threat" or "bracing threat". The use of the display in antagonistic interactions should be noted in the ethogram.
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- This page was last modified on 26 September 2008, at 19:38.
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