ALS 4574 - Exam 2 Review

An animal’s home range is usually ___ (smaller/larger) than its territory

larger

What are the solutions for the lek paradox?

• The female may disagree with one another as to the most important traits

• The female are making an overall assessment if male fitness taking into account many traits

What is Batemann’s principle?

the sex which invests the most in offspring will become a limiting resource over which the other sex competes

What does selection on female fecundity indicate?

number of offspring produced

Are smaller or larger females favored by fecundity selection?

larger

Why are larger females favored by fecundity selection?

larger females can produce more eggs

What is Zahavi’s “handicap” hypothesis?

extravagant male traits are costly to develop and maintain. Choosing a mate with “good genes” requires an honest signal of genetic quality meaning only males in good condition (those with good genes) will be able to develop and maintain an ornament

Why do males evolve costly signals?

to indicate their underlying genetic quality for survivorship

What type of social group can chickens be raised in to live together?

stable social groups

What’s social inertia?

the resistance to change or the endurance of stable relationships in societies or social groups

What contributes to stamina in game birds?

• architecture of the blood vessels

• extremely short blood coagulation

• prothrombin times

What allows two male/female chickens to avoid fighting?

establishment of a dominance hierarchy in a stable social group

What is direct selection?

process of natural section that occurs when hereditarily distinctive individuals differ in the number of surviving offspring they produce or number of genes they pass on to subsequent generations

What is direct fitness?

measure of the reproductive or genetic success of an individual based on the number of offspring that live to reproduce

What is “kin” or indirect selection?

hereditarily distinctive individuals differ in the number of non-descendant relatives (not their offspring, but its relatives) they help survive to reproduce

What is indirect fitness?

measure of the genetic success of an altruistic individual based on the number of relatives (or genetically similar relatives) that the altruist helps to reproduce that would not otherwise have survived to do so

Who was the person behind the mathematics of kin selection where we would willingly die for 2 brothers or 8 cousins?

J.B.S. Haldane

What is reciprocal altrusim?

a behavior whereby an organism acts in a manner that temporarily reduces its fitness while increasing another organism’s fitness with the expectation that the other organism will act in a similar manner at a later time

Which species are known to practice reciprocal altruism?

• Olive baboon

• Vampire bats

• Cotton-top tamarin monkeys

• Longnose parrotfish (Hipposcarus harid)

• wrasse (Labrodies dimidatus)

What are the feet like on howler monkeys?

like human hands with an opposable big toe

What are the hands like on howler monkeys?

not very well developed (thumb and index finger go on one side of branch)

What is brachiation?

moving hand over hand through the tree tops