Introduction Flashcards
Explain ‘survival of the fittest
Short hand for natural selection. It is the continued existence of organisms best suited to their environment, with the extinction of others. Darwin never actually used it. ‘Fitness’ poor term as it means different things to different people
What is sociobiology
Proposed by E. O Wilson, taking evolutionary approach from ethologists but focused on function (ultimate) as opposed to stimuli (proximate).
It looks at the evolution of social behaviour and used functional explanations of pro/anti social behaviour. ‘Functional’ used to explain how current behavioural responses occurs due to their usefulness for ancestors
Wilson’s book The New Synthesis
Saw sociobiology as a branch of biology, being the ‘systematic study of the biological basis of all social behaviour. He argued that if certain behaviours affected reproductive success and if some behaviour is influenced by genes then natural selection somewhat shapes human behaviour.
Very controversial book, especially chapter 27. Seen as a dangerous form of thinking
What is the SSSM and some of it’s features
Standard Social Sciences Model hated sociobiology e.g. Banduara, Margaret Mead.
Assumptions of SSSM: humans born a blank slate (tabula rasa), behaviour is infintely malleable, culture is an autonomous force independent of people, behaviour determined by processes of learning, socialisation and indoctrination, learning process can be generalised to various phenomena
What is biological determinism
Everything about is specified by our genes. Biologically inherited traits and the environmental influences dominate the traits we have
What is cultural determinism
the culture in which we are raised determines who we are at emotional and behavioral levels
Evolutionary psychology as modular, human universals
specialised areas in the mind to solve different adaptive problems.
Jerry Fodor- propsed the innate mental modules of the mind
What is EEA, what period of time was it in
Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness- where early humans evolved.
Believed to have been in the African Savannah during Upper Pleistocene period from about 1.7 mya
Explain evolutionary mismatch/adaptive time lag
Current maladaptions humans display resulting from ancestral adaptation to EEA (I.e. spiders will have been more of threat to early humans than today)
What is behavioural ecology
current local environment of a species and any relevant response to it. Focus on how environmental pressures select behavioural responses.
Predict and explain ‘economic’ behavioural decisions i.e. foraging, fighting
Optimality’s role in behavioural ecology
Optimising inclusive fitness, weighing up of costs/benefits of different strategies.
Flexibility of behavioural strategies can be facultative (presence of oxygen for respiration) vs obligate (doesn’t need oxygen)
What is a niche and example conditions of it
the environment and way of life a certain organism occupies. Greater overlap of niches leads to increased competition.
Specific to certain niche i.e. sickle-cell anaemia, malaria in certain parts of africa/asia
Carpented (man-made) niche- muller-lyer effect, straight lines/corners in human urban environments
What are the 4 WHY questions
ontogeny (development), phylogeny (evolutionary histories), function, causation
Explain the 4 key principles of evolution by NS
heritability, Variability, surplus offspring, non-random survival and reproduction
Optimality graph and Smith’s Inuit study
adaptive trade-offs taken in a species environment (i.e. moving for better hunting spots
On graph- time foraging in patch, transit time, cumulative resource intake, optimal time in patch
