Besides avoiding more obvious predators, wild animals must fend off tiny disease-causing viruses, bacteria and other parasites teeming in their environments. Animal behaviorist Dr. Benjamin Hart, a professor in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, argues that the coping strategies animals use to survive these tiny threats shape animal behavior as profoundly as finding food and avoiding larger predators. In a review of the research field to date, Hart groups these coping strategies into five categories: avoidance, immunity-enhancing controlled exposure, depressed or sickly behavior, assistance of other sick animals, and sexual selection of parasite-resistant mates. In his own studies, Hart and his colleagues have documented therapeutic and prophylactic grooming behaviors. For example, East African impala remove ticks by grooming themselves over 1,000 times a day and grooming others in those hard-to-reach head and neck areas. In another study, Hart has found that postcopulatory genital grooming of male rats can prevent sexually transmitted infections due to certain protective properties of their saliva. Hart will review behavioral adaptions to parasites and pathogens on Thursday, July 29, 10:30 a.m., in Wellman Hall, Room 2.