life history and parental care

Question 1

Life history traits involved in tradeoffs

Answer 1

limited amount of energy to invest in survival, maintenance, and reproduction

Question 2

Natural selection will optimize trade offs for a organism in a given environment

Answer 2

Maximize number of offspring surviving to maturity
depends on likeliness of survival to different age classes

Question 3

Parental investment

Answer 3

females more likely than males to provide parental care, males have less investment, have uncertain paternity. optimal life history tradeoffs may differ between males and females

Question 4

Sex role reversal

Answer 4

may occur when males invest more in offspring than females ex. wattled jacanas, females lay eggs and abandon, males protect eggs and chicks. OSR is skewed towards females

Question 5

organisms can regulate their families to maximize fitness how

Answer 5

the number of offspring
sex ratios

Question 6

Using the number of offspring to maximize fitness

Answer 6

miscarriage
cannibalism
- sand gobies

Question 7

why are sex ratios balanced

Answer 7

frequency-dependent selection
-each sex favored when rare
-rare sex has more mating opportunity

Question 8

skewed sex ratio

Answer 8

trivers willard hypothesis
-males benefit more from being large than females do.
Predicts investment in females when mother is in poor condition males when mother is in good condition

ex. Bluestreak cleaner wrasee. Switch to males when large

Question 9

conflicts over parental care

Answer 9

-Female and male strategies to maximize fitness may differ
-Siblings compete for parental investment
-Genomic imprinting drives female/male differences in
investment in offspring

Question 10

Strategies to maximize offspring produced
over a lifetime can differ for the sexes

Answer 10

ex. penduline tits
both males and females want to abandon the nest first

-leaving too soon is risky because offspring could die
-trickery ensues

Question 11

Siblings may compete for parental investment

Answer 11

before all three birds are the same for feeding rate after one is way higher

Question 12

Genomic imprinting

Answer 12

gene expression silenced by methylation by one parent
-offspring express paternal or maternal copy of genes not both

Question 13

Genomic imprinting and parental conflict

Answer 13

-Father wants lots of
energy put into the
current offspring.
-Mother wants to
reduce energy put into
current offspring, save
energy for future
offspring.