Exam 2- Adaptations & Animal Behavior

obligate traits

where the phenotype is fairly unresponsive to normal environment variation

falcultative traits

where the phenotype adaptively varies in response to normal environmental variation

what use is natural selection in psychology?

1. the brain is the organ that produces behaior and the brain’s evolution is partly due to natural selection

2. theories are tools for explaining observations. The more observations that can be explained by a theory, the better the theory is

what has changed across history in terms of behavior?

what the proposed goal of behavior is

what foes the evolutionary theory prompt psychology to be?

functionalistic but adaptionisitic

evolutionary psychology

psychological science conducted with due consideration of the fact that tthe braina nd behavior are products of evolution

• a paradigm for approaching psychological questions, rathe than discipline

what is the value of using darwinian theroy?

it can unify disparate observations and inspire novel hypotheses about human behavior

while adaptionism is a powerful tool…

Instead a particular phenotype might….

1. not all modern phenotypes are optimum responses to the current environemnt

2. A. Result from mismatch between genes selected fr in ancestral environments and the organisms current environemnt B. A side effect of natural selection on an associated trait C. E the result of evolutionary processes other than natural selection

proximate causes

mechanism & ontogeny

ultimate causes

adaptation & phylogeny

mechanism

the internal state of the organism causing the behavior

A. The more you know about the internal state of the organism the more explainable the external state is

onotogeny

developmental influences that affect how mechanisms produce behavior

A. Your mechanism is constantly changing and then adapting every second, whatever stimuli you react to is the next seconds ontogeny

B. Anything prior to the exact present, starts at the conception and ends at death

adaptation (ultimate cause)

the reproductive consequences of a trait in the ancestral environment which influenced genetic transmission

A. This is evolution by natural selection

phylogeny

processes other than natural selection that infuence genetic transmission

Tinbergens levels working backwards

1. We have a behavior

2. What cause this behavior is the immediate environment x the machinery of the organism

3. Developmental environment x past machinery shapes how the behavior reacts

4. Ontogeny comes from genes

5. those genes come from the ancestral environment x genes tending to contribute reproductive success x other influences on genetic transmission A flow

Comparative approach

Examining whether phenotypic variation between species correlated with variant in their typical environments if those phenotypes are adaptive to those environments

Monogamy

Typically 1 male with 1 female

Polygyny

1 male tends to have exclusive sexual access to more than one female

Polyandry

1 female has sexual access to more than one male, each of whom mates pretty exclusively with that one female

Polygynandry

Everybody mates with everyone

Reverse engineering

Starting with the solution to figure out the problem.

Looking for a good fit between the structure and activity of a phenotype and the ancestral problem it’s hypothesized to have solves