NBIK14010U Social Behaviour and Communication

Volume 2026/2027
Education

MSc Programme in Biology
MSc Programme in Biology with a minor subject

Content

Wildlife population sizes have decreased by an astonishing 68% on average since 1970. By contrast, the numbers of domestic animals are as high as ever, but they often suffer from poor welfare. This course aims at providing students with an overview of the fascinating behaviour of both wild and domestic animals, and mainly of how they communicate and interact socially. Knowledge gathered in this course should thus be useful to students interested in using behaviour for conservation, as well as to students interested in animal welfare, and those interested in research on animal behaviour.

The course covers the main topics in animal social behaviour and communication, illustrated both by textbook examples and recent findings in the field: Levels of socialisation; Motivation and emotions; Communication networks; Signalling, reception and interpretation of communicative behavior under constraints; Signals, information and meaning; Social cognition; Microbiomes and cognition; Social aspects of animal welfare; Social and territorial behaviour; Cooperation; Mating systems; Human-animal interactions (including anthropogenic impacts on wildlife).

Learning Outcome

Knowledge :

By completing the course the student will have obtained detailed knowledge of behavioural and communicative processes fundamental for animal social behaviour and organisation.

Skills :

By completing the course the student will know how to:

  • Explain animal social behaviour and organisation;
  • Present in details the connecting and organising function of signals for animal social behavior and explain the evolutionary forces that shape signals and signaling;
  • Explain how cognition shapes social interactions.


Competences :
By completing the course the student can:

  • Propose alternative hypotheses to explain a behaviour, design an appropriate experiment to test them and suggest predictions;
  • Measure behaviour using different methods and analyse the data obtained in different manners;
  • Critically discuss results with respect to the hypothesis tested, place them in a broad general context, link them to other behavioural issues and propose further lines of inquiry;
  • Explain the costs and benefits of different experimental designs, data collection and analysis methods and identify sources of error;
  • Present their work (in oral and written form) at a level approaching the scientific standard;
  • Extract, present and critically discuss in detail the results of a scientific article about animal behaviour;
  • Identify and explain strengths and weaknesses in scientific articles, suggest solutions to the weaknesses and further inquiries inspired by the strengths.

Textbook and scientific articles (see Absalon for details).

We recommend that the course participants have basic knowledge about evolutionary biology (for example obtained in the course "Evolutionsbiologi").

Academic qualifications equivalent to a BSc degree is recommended.
The course includes a combination of plenary lectures given by the course leader and guest teachers who are experts in the field, discussions of recently-published scientific articles, and experiments using specialised software for measuring behaviour and analysing vocalisations as well as hand-on statistical analyses (notably in R software and/or Matlab); two lectures of one hours each, and two discussion confrontations (colloquia) of two hours each, plus one practical of four hours per week, including four group exercise reports and one oral presentation (also in group), for a total of six weeks, followed by an individual project consisting of a 2 page written assignment during the seventh week of the course. The course ends with an individual oral defense of the written assignment and an oral examination on the rest of the course contents. All students must hand in at least three of the four exercise reports to take the exam.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Lectures
  • 26
  • Preparation
  • 117.5
  • Practical exercises
  • 31
  • Project work
  • 25
  • Guidance
  • 6
  • Exam
  • 0.5
  • Total
  • 206.0
Written
Oral
Individual
Collective
Continuous feedback during the course of the semester
Feedback by final exam (In addition to the grade)
Peer feedback (Students give each other feedback)

The students will be given oral feedback during the discussion confrontations and after the oral presentation. Written feedback will be given for the four exercise reports. These will also be followed-up with oral, collective feedback. The students will also be given individual feedback to their exam essays and oral exam.

Credit
7.5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Oral exam on basis of previous submission, 20 minutes. Without preparation time
Type of assessment details
The oral examination will consist of the defense of a previously submitted 2-page written assignment (10 minutes) and a discussion of one of the scientific articles (randomly allocated) discussed during the course (10 minutes). The examination is without preparation time. The final grade is given based on an overall assessment of the 2-page assignment and the oral examination.

To be able to participate in the oral exam the student must have submitted the 2-page written assignment.
Examination prerequisites

Students must hand in at least three of the four exercise reports to take the exam.

 

 

Aid
Only certain aids allowed (see description below)

The students can bring a printed copy of their written assigment (without hand written notes) to the oral exam.

For preparing the written assigment, All aid is allowed.

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Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
No external censorship
Two internal examiners
Re-exam

The same as ordinary exam.

If the student has submitted the written assignment for the ordinary exam but has not passed the oral exam, the student must reuse the previously submitted written assignment for the re-examination.

If the student has not submitted the written assignment as part of the ordinary exam, the student must submit an assignment based on a new topic agreed upon with the teacher no later than two weeks before the re-examination in order to participate in the oral re-examination.

If the examination prerequisites requirement have not been fullfilled the student must hand in the missing reports (based on data provided by the teachers) no later than three weeks before the exam.  

 

Criteria for exam assesment

In order to obtain the grade 12, the student should convincingly and accurately demonstrate the knowledge, skills and competencies described under Learning Outcome.