Comp Psych Exam 1 Flashcards
Natural selection is fundamentally about survival of the fittest
False
The researcher could watch the Japanese tits in their natural environment and record when a call is given, what the call is, and how the tits react.
Observational
In order for Darwinian natural selection to cause evolutionary change, a population must contain individuals that differ hereditarily in some characteristics because
unless there is variation of this osrt, parents cannot pass on their advantageous attributes to their offspring
Consider the following observation: Male song sparrows sing more at dawn than during any other time of day. WHICH OF THESE 3 IS ASKING A QUESTION THAT MAY BE ANSWERED BY EMPLOYING OBSERVATIONAL STUDY DESIGN
X with regard to answering this question: “What is the evolved function of the pattern of song production by the song sparrow?”
In what way does the theory of descent with modification differ from the theory of evolution by natural selection?
Descent with modification provides an account of the evolutionary events that took place as a modern species evolved from ancestral ones; natural selection theory provides a means for why some changes spread through a species while others did not
A benefit to this approach is that it is a basic and easy way to define and record the animals’ behaviors
Observational
A benefit to this approach is that the researcher can generate ideas beyond a single species
Comparative
A benefit to this approach is that the researcher can establish a more direct causal relationship between the type of predator and the bird’s response
Experimental
Does this data support the predator distraction hypothesis?
Yes, the data demonstrate that with decreasing distance to the gull colony, the mock gull eggs are protected with increased gull mobbing behavior, in lower predation rates on the eggs
Beginning with a common ancestor, over time, across generations, species could change dramatically. Some might add new body features, others might drop them. Ultimately one type of creature could be transformed into something utterly different. It is a process Darwin Called _____
Descent with modification
The researcher could present different models to the tits, including predators they are familiar with, predators they are not familiar with, and animals that would not be considered predators, and assess their different calls and behavioral responses. (NAME A COST)
A cost is that especially in the field, the experiment must be designed carefully to account for other variation that could be accounting for the bird’s responses instead
The researcher could watch the Japanese tits int heir natural environment and record when a call is given, what the call is, and how the tits react (NAME A COST)
A cost is that the observations are all correlational and the researcher must be cautious about drawing any causal conclusions
The researcher can use phylogeny to look at if closely related species have a similar behavioral response to predators
A cost to this approach is that it requires historical relationships among the species to be known
Which example illustrates using both a proximate and ultimate level of analysis to understand a behavior?
Digger bees are able to smell females that have burrowed close to the surface using scent-detecting cells in their antennae; males with this ability reproduce more successfully than those without it
The existence of workers among honeybees and other eusocial insects is considered a Darwinian puzzle because
these workers are largely sterile and so should be eliminated over time by natural selection
Expectations (conclusions) is the hypothesis is true
Predictions
The statement “Lemmings disperse from areas of high population density because they inherited this ability from a lemming-like ancestor in the past” is a hypothesis about
evolutionary history
Cliff-nesting gulls like the black-legged kittiwake have relatively few nest predators. Although closely related to many ground-nesting gulls that do mob predators, groups of nesting adult black-legged kittiwakes do not mob predators. Using the comparative approach, this example illustrates
divergent evolution, as less predation on eggs and chicks provided a different selection pressure than that which originally led to the evolution of mobbing in ground-nesting gulls
Darwin proposed that _____ must be the starting point for change in nature
Variation
higher numbers of offspring compared with a male that joins a new group but does not kill any existing offspring
ultimate
promotion of ovulation in the female langurs
proximate
We observe variation in a population of lizard with respect to how fast individuals can run. We attempt to select for the ability to run slowly, not quickly. After six generations of selective breeding of only the slowest with the slowest, the mean running speed of the lizards has not changed. What is the appropriate conclusion based on this work?
The differences between the lizard in running speed in the original population were not caused by genetic differences among them
Deceptive signaling is widespread in nature. For example, certain orchids lure pollinator wasps to them with flower petals that small like receptive female wasps. This case is a Darwinian puzzle because
natural selection ought to favor discriminating behavior on the part of male wasps so that they do not waste time, energy, and even sperm on orchid flowers
Which is an example of a Darwinian puzzle?
If two or even 3 eggs are added to a bird’s nest, the adult birds often can rear them successfully along with their own chicks
