Intro and Evolutionary History
Which of the following are considered an organism's phenotype?
a) swimming speed
b) length of tail
c) DNA sequence
swimming speed, length of tail
What is the difference between selection and genetic drift?
A process in which environmental or genetic influences determine which types of organism thrive better than others, regarded as a factor in evolution.
Vs
A mechanism of evolution in which allele frequencies of a population change over generations due to chance (sampling error).
Heritability vs. Inherited – what's the difference?
Heritability refers to variation in a population, while inherited traits are those passed down genetically.
Who coined the term "meme"
Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene
What is the information needed to navigate between thousands of places in the city colloquially called for London Taxi Drivers?
The Knowledge
What is the fallacy of the 'appeal to nature'?
Human behavior should not be used to justify or explain other animal behaviors.
What is the difference between the agent of selection and the target of selection?
Agent: the external force that generates selection
Target: the trait that causes variance in survival or reproduction due to the agent of selection
True or False: Height is inherited but not heritable.
False, it is both inherited and heritable.
What are the 3 stages of bird song production?
1. Subsong
2. Plastic song
3. Crystallized song
What part of the brain is known to grow in response to increased navigational training, such as in London taxi drivers?
Hippocampus
What are Tinbergen's 2 ultimate questions?
Function (adaptive significance) and Evolution.
If cheetahs are influenced by environmental effects (like nutrition level) which have long term effects on behavior, is this selection and/or evolution?
Selection
Why can twins separated at birth exhibit the same and different behaviors?
Behaviors can arise from a change in gene regulation rather than a difference in gene sequences
Juvenile mistakes in copying songs of adults - copying errors give rise to dialects.
Besides appearance, what traits are more similar in doppelgängers than in random individuals?
personality traits, educational levels, and certain behaviors like smoking habits
What components are necessary for evolution by selection?
Variation, Inheritance, Selection, Time, and Adaptation
No, sexual recombination occurs regardless of whether an allele is being selected for or not.
What are the disadvantages of candidate gene studies?
It is nearly impossible to find one or even a few genes responsible for a phenotype
Describe the positive feed back loop between oxytocin levels in humans and dogs.
As dogs gaze at their owners, owner oxytocin levels rise, as owners gaze at their dogs, dog oxytocin levels rise.
How do some animals, like mountain chickadees, demonstrate the relationship between survival and cognitive ability?
Those with better cognitive abilities (such as spatial memory) are more likely to survive
Young male songbirds first listen to the songs of nearby males of their species. Then they start to practice singing. By adulthood, male songbirds have learned how to produce the song that is characteristic of their species. Is this answerable by one or many of Tinbergen's questions?
Development (or ontogeny, or acquisition)
Is sexual selection a form of natural selection?
Sexual selection is not a subcategory of natural selection, as Darwin made very clear: it arises from differences in mating success, whereas natural selection is due to variance in all other fitness components. Sexual selection can occur without natural selection!
How does genetic variation change with genetic drift? Provide an example.
Decrease, ex. bottleneck (smaller pop, less variation)
kasper hauser experiments
Species that rely more heavily on cached food, like Clark’s nutcrackers and pinyon jays, showed longer and more accurate retention of spatial memory than scrub jays and Mexican jays. How does this finding support the link between ecological dependence on caching and cognitive evolution?
This supports the idea that ecological pressures (food dependence) drive selection for enhanced cognitive abilities, such as memory capacity.