Final Exam Flashcards
What is Communication?
Transfer of information about the signaler or its environment using signals
Why does communication evolve?
Allows individuals to reveal their qualities or motivations to receivers
What is a signal?
A perceptible behavior or trait (physical form) that encodes information
Adaptive trait that increases survival and reproductive success
What is Batesian Mimicry?
Harmless prey resemble dangerous prey to avoid predation
What is a cue?
Structures or behaviors that affect behaviors of other organisms (no evolution)
What enforces honesty in animal signals? (If female house finches prefer redder males, why aren’t all males equally bright red?)
Costs of signals (different individuals pay different effective costs)
What is the Handicap Principle?
Honesty and reliability can be maintained due to the different costs that individuals pay for being manipulative and deceptive
What is the active space of a communication signal?
The volume of medium in which a receiver can detect and recognize a signal
What factors affect a signals active space?
Attenuation (spreading over distance)
Masking (covering up the signal; noise)
Degradation (barriers blocking signal)
What is Stimulus Generalization?
Animals behave similarly to similar patterns, usually color (kiskadees avoided snakes with coloration patterns similar to the poisonous coral snakes)
Sexual selection
Acts on traits that contribute to an individual’s mating success
Sexual Dimorphism
Results from sexual selection acting differently on males and females
Intrasexual Selection
Competition within a sex for mates (usually males)
Intersexual Selection
Mate choice/being choosy (mainly females)
What is Bateman’s Principle?
The sex with a steeper sexual selection gradient will compete to mate, while the other exercises choice
What is Triver’s Parental Investment Hypothesis?
Competition is determined by parental investment. (Most investment is choosy, least investment will compete to mate)
Anisogamy
Differences in parental investment begin with fundamental differences between male and female gametes (sperm is cheap)
Direct Benefits
Female obtains something that increases her own fitness (survival, fecundity)
Indirect Benefits
Increase fitness of female’s offspring
What is Fisherian Runaway Selection and what does it entail?
Females prefer a sexually attractive trait, resulting in “sexy sons”
What is the Sensory Bias Hypothesis to explain the evolution of exaggerated male sexual traits? What does it entail?
Result of selection for a different function of female’s sensory system
Males evolve signals to match sensory system characteristics
Female gets NO BENEFITS
What are the assumptions of the Emlen and Oring model of how mating systems are shaped?
Resource availability
Environmental potential for polygamy (EPP)
Operational sex ratio (OSR)
Monopolizability of mates
Polygamy
Multiple mates
Monogamy
One partner
Polygyny
Multiple females
Polyandry
Multiple males
What factors influence whether territoriality should evolve?
Resources are limited, and defendable.
Fitness benefits must outweigh the costs
Lek Polygyny
Males defend a display area that has no other purpose in feeding, nesting, reproduction, parental care, etc.
Hotspot Hypothesis
Males cluster in places where receptive females likely occur
Hotshot Hypothesis
Subordinate males cluster around attractive males to interact with females
Mutualistic Behavior
Improves fitness of actor and recipient
Selfish Behavior
Decreases fitness of recipient
Altruistic Behavior
Decreases fitness of actor but increases fitness of recipient
Direct Fitness
Reproductive success based on number of offspring that survive to reproduce
Indirect Fitness
Genetic success based on number of relatives helped
Inclusive Fitness
Total measure of an individual’s contribution of genes to the next generation due to direct and indirect selection
What is Hamilton’s Rule?
Giving aid to non-descendant kin will evolve if rB > C
R is genetic relatedness
B is reproductive benefit
C is reproductive cost
Male turkeys court females in coalitions of 2-4 males. Subordinate males have 0 reproductive success, while dominant males have higher success than solo males. If subordinate turkeys have an r value of 0.42, B value of 6.1, and C value of 0.9, does Hamilton’s Rule explain why they join the coalition?
2.6 > 0.9
Yes, since rB is greater than C
What is Kin Selection?
Acting in favor of individuals that share some of your genes, at a cost to yourself
Social Behavior
Interactions of individuals living in close proximity
What is a society?
Cooperating, communicating group of conspecific organisms
What defines a Eusocial mammal?
Cooperative brood care, inbreeding (overlapping generations), and division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups
What are the costs of sociality?
Competition, Parasitism, Disease, and Interference (negative interactions among conspecifics)
What is the Predator Dilution Effect?
As prey group size increases, each individual has a lower chance of being predated
What are the benefits of sociality?
Increased vigilance, predator dilution, group defense, and cooperative foraging/hunting
What is the Ideal Free Distribution, versus the Ideal Despotic Distribution?
IFD is when animals freely distribute themselves to maximize individual reproductive success.
IDD is when habitat selection is constrained by territorial behavior of others.
What hypotheses explains why territory owners tend to have an advantage over newcomers?
Payoff Asymmetry Hypothesis: if territory resident removed and replaced by newcomer, ability to win territory back will be function of replacement tenure
Where do language centers exist in our brain?
Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area (cerebral cortex)
Broca’s Area
Ability to speak a language
Wernicke’s Area
Ability to comprehend spoken language
What is the Foxp2 gene?
Promotes language (Conductor of language)
What defines language?
Ability to take a finite set of elements (words) and use a set of rules (grammar) to create infinite comprehensible combinations. Describe past, future, and imagined events.
What is the affiliation function hypothesis to explain the maintenance of human language dialects?
Humans use the way they speak to signal group membership which aids in cooperation
What is the McGurk Effect, and what does it show us?
Our brains have circuits that integrate the visual and auditory stimuli associated with speech
Miller et al paper Hypothesis and Findings
Women during estrus will appear more attractive and feel sexier, thus they will earn more tips as lap-dancers.
Hidden estrus hypothesis is false because regular cycling dancers made more when they were fertile compared to those using the pill
Main Takeaway from DuVal Paper
Cooperation increased beta’s immediate reproductive success, the success of close relatives and increases their chance of future reproduction
