Research Questions

A good research question…

• Uses defined terminology

• Can be answered by your study

• Clarifies what you would measure, in which species, at what age, or under what conditions

• Can be falsified

“The first and most consequential decision in any study is choosing the right question at the right level of explanation. Tinbergen's framework provides guidance.”

Tinbergen's Four Questions (short)

• Mechanism

  • How does it work?

• Development

  • How does it develop?

• Function

  • What is it for?

• Evolution

  • How did it evolve?

All four questions matter

• No single question sufficiently describes the complexity of animal behaviour

• Proximate and ultimate explanations are complementary - not competing

• A behaviour’s function (e.g., to find a mate) is fundamentally different from its mechanism (i.e. the hormones that trigger it)

• Animals are not static organisms - they develop over time and are constantly influenced by the environment. A single mechanistic rule cannot adequately capture why animals behave the way they do.

Innate behaviours

behaviours that are not changed by learning

Tinbergen's Four Questions: Mechanism

• Causation

• What underlying mechanism causes the behaviour?

• Which stimuli elicit the behavioural response?

• A mechanistic question asks what internal states and external stimuli produce the behaviour. It can be addressed by measuring hormones, neural activity, or the stimuli that trigger responses.

Tinbergen's Four Questions: Development

• Ontogeny

• How does the behaviour change with age?

• Is development of the behaviour affected by environmental factors?

• A developmental question asks how behaviour presents across the lifetime. It can be addressed by comparing individuals at different developmental stages or with different early experiences.

Tinbergen's Four Questions: Function

• Adaptive value

• What is the (current) function of the behaviour?

• How does the behaviour affect survival and reproduction?

• A functional question asks what the behaviour does for the animal. What is its effect on survival and reproduction? It can be addressed by estimation of fitness.

Tinbergen's Four Questions: Evolution

• Phylogeny

• How did the behaviour evolve?

• Which species share the behaviour, and did it evolve once or multiple times?

• An evolutionary question asks where a behaviour came from, which species share it, and whether similarities reflect shared ancestry or independent evolution. It can be addressed by comparing genetic expression, phylogenetic analyses etc.

Ultimate vs proximate explanations

Ultimate

• Function & Evolution

• “Why”

  • Why does the organism do is?

  • Why did it evolve?

Proximate

• Mechanism & Development

• “How”

  • How does it work?

  • How did it develop?

Hypothesis vs prediction

Hypothesis: A proposed explanation for an observed behaviour. A hypothesis should always state WHY.

Prediction: What you would observe in your data if your hypothesis is true. States WHAT the results will look like.

• One hypothesis can generate multiple predictions

• One prediction can be consistent with multiple hypotheses

• If a prediction fails the hypothesis is challenged

• If a prediction succeeds the hypothesis is supported, but not proven - other hypotheses may make the same prediction (i.e. there may be other explanations for the behaviour you observe)

Example:

Observation: Male long-tailed widowbirds have tails far longer than needed for flight. We suspect this might be driven by female choice (a behaviour driving sexual selection).

Hypothesis: Tail length evolved through female choice with females preferring longer-tailed males, and this preference drives exaggeration of the trait over evolutionary time.

Two predictions: 1. Males with experimentally elongated tails will attract more females than controls. This prediction supports the hypothesis. But are there any alternative explanations? 2. Tail length will not correlate with territory size. This prediction rules out that females prefer resources, not tails.

Use the lecture slides for Research Questions to practice writing good hypotheses and predictions