Download Study questions week 2

Study questions week 2
A good strategy for the study questions is to write out your answers to them. For me,
writing out the answers really reveals what parts of the material I know, and what parts I
need to study more.
Lecture 5 Environmental effects on behavior
1. What is phenotypic plasticty? How do you measure plasticity? Describe three
examples from class of a plastic trait.
2. What does it mean to be canalized? How are innate behaviors canalized? Give an
example of such a behavior.
3. What is an innate behavior? How do you recognize them? What are the three
components of an innate behavior?
4. Describe how Tinbergen tested whether gull begging behavior is innate. What are the
components the begging behavior?
5. Why is egg rolling in geese considered innate?
6. How can yawning be considered an innate behavior? What are the components?
7. How can the development of worker behavior be considered plastic? What
experiments were done to determine the social components of worker behavior?
8. How is worker behavior regulated by juvenile hormone? What is the evidence for
this?
9. What is developmental plasticity? Describe two examples from class.
10. What is the key difference between polyphenism and polymorphism?
11. How do spadefoot toads develop different morphs? Why is it plastic? Is it a
polyphenism or polymorphism?
12. What are the two forms of tiger salamanders? How does their behavior change
because of the environment? Is this change adaptive?
13. How is learning an example of plasticity?
14. What is learning? What is required for learning to occur?
15. Compare habituation to sensitization. How are they different? Give an examples of
each. Why might they be adaptive?
16. What is associative learning?
17. Define classical conditioning and operant conditioning? How are they similar? How
are they different? How are they different from habituation/sensitization?
18. What is culture? What is a meme? Give an example of a meme. How does cultural
transfer occur? Why is cultural evolution important?
19. Compare cultural learning to individual learning. How are they different?
20. How is cultural evolution similar to genetic evolution? How are they different?
21. Describe cultural learning in cheetahs. How is this adaptive?
22. How do white-crowned sparrows learn to sing? Describe the experiments that were
done to test each of the components that contribute to their songs. Specify which
components are plastic and which are canalized.
Lecture 6: Economic decisions and the individual
1. What is the marginal value theorem? What kinds of costs and benefits do organisms
face when acting in accordance with the marginal value theorem?
2. Why is foraging often represented by a model that has diminishing returns? Discuss
how costs and benefits change when foraging.
3. How does traveling time affect foraging decisions in terms of how many prey or how
much food to carry? Describe an example.
4. What “currencies” are starlings and bees trying to maximize when they are foraging?
Why is there a difference between the two species? Think about how behavior varies
with respect to the ecology of an organism. Describe an experiment that suggests why
they might be different.
5. What kinds of things do organisms try to maximize when selecting prey? Give an
example.
6. How does predation risk affect foraging? Give an example.
7. Why do animals store food? What is the cost of this behavior? How have species that
store food become adapted for dealing with the demands of storing food?
8. Describe an example of how scrub jays are able to deal with problems related to food
storing. Why is this behavior likely to have evolved in the wild?
9. Why might optimality models be inaccurate? Why are they useful?
Lecture 7: Sexual selection
1. Compare and contrast natural selection with sexual selection. What are the 'agents' of
selection in each case? How might organisms be adapted in each case? What does it
mean that there is often a tradeoff between sexual and natural selection? Give an example
of such a tradeoff in an animal species.
2. What was Trivers hypothesis about which sex will compete more for mates? What
kinds of “investments” was Trivers thinking about?
5. What did Bateman do in his classic experiment? What were the three general
conclusions that came out of his experiment.
6. How do the conclusions of Bateman vary with respect to reproductive investment of
males and females. In other words, how does mating competition vary in a system where
males and female invest equally vs. males invest less than females (or females invest less
than males). Describe an example that supports the theoretical prediction.
7. How do the many experiments testing Bateman’s predictions illustrate the scientific
process?
8. Was Bateman’s study correct in your opinion? Why or why not?
Bonus video! If you liked the video on Alex the parrot, here is a link to the full NOVA
episode. Viewing it is optional, of course. However, the rest of the video is pretty
interesting.
How smart are animals?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/nature/how-smart-are-animals.html