Lecture 15 - How did our brains evolve?

Question 1

Define natural selection.

Answer 1

Natural selection simply means that those individuals with most surviving offspring have a stronger genetic influence on the next generations.

KEY ingredients:
1. variation – individuals differ (otherwise next generation will be the same no matter what)

2. competition – number and success of offspring varies (so that the genes from some individuals are more represented in the next generations).

Key contributors to having surviving offspring:
Survival: yours and your offspring
Sex: do you create offspring (and do your offspring in turn)?

(for animals living in groups, things that influence survival and sex get pretty complicated).

Question 2

reading is on lecture 13 cards.

Answer 2

:)