L8 Social Behaviour, Kinship and cooperation

Question 1

What are the costs of living on a group?

Answer 1

More competition for resources
More conspicuos to predators
Susceptible to parasites and disease
Conspecifics may kill offspring

Question 2

What are the benefits of group living?

Answer 2

Improved foraging efficiency
less chance of being predated (dilution and confusion effect)
Improved defence of resources from non-group members
Communal care of offspring

Question 3

How did they test whether chick size in the American cliff swallow were a result of ectoparasites or something else?

Answer 3

Study by Charles and Mary brow - fumigated nests of swallows in one population- without the parasite the chicks grew bigger

Question 4

How do the guillemots benefit from group living?

Answer 4

Breed close together, means better defence against seagulls who try to eat offspring

Question 5

How could alarm calling been seen as a selfish behaviour?

Answer 5

Benefits the individual, Predator confusion and deterrence, reciprocal altruism, parental care in protecting offspring

Question 6

How could alarm calling be seen as an altruistic behaviour? (indirect)

Answer 6

saves relatives (benefits to individual outweigh risks)

Question 7

What you expect if the benefit to the individual is indirect in geldings ground squirrels

Answer 7

females should call more than males, because males disperse and females stay at home (so females are more closely related to each other than are males).

Question 8

What is kin selection?

Answer 8

evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an organism’s relatives, even at a cost to the organism’s own survival and reproduction