User:Mfkamowski/sandbox

Topic Choices

 * 1) Strategic pluralism
 * 2) Start with what it is
 * 3) Talk about how a female uses it to select for a male, Ie what traits she is looking for and how she looks for them
 * 4) look at research done with it to see how it occurs
 * 5) where it fits into the grand scheme of evolutionary biology
 * 6) Punctuated Gradualism
 * 7) Begin by explaining what it is and the basic research
 * 8) Id talk about it is related to both the two other models of evolution, Phyletic Gradualism and Punctuated Equilibrium, before going into what sets it aside.
 * 9) Look at specific species where we observe what seems to be Punctuated Gradualism
 * 10) Gonozooids
 * 11) Talk about how they are organisms that are adapted to have specific generations which primarily are for sexual reproduction
 * 12) Look into which species we have seen this in and if there is a specific reason looking through the research
 * 13) Does this have long lasting implications of the survivability of these species vs those that dont have different generations for sexual reproduction?
 * 14) Quasi-Linkage Equilibrium
 * 15) Give an explanation of what it is and what it means
 * 16) Do a bit about how its a proposed improvement to Fishers Fundamental theorem
 * 17) Talk about what it would mean for research in population genetics if it was used

Article Evaluation

 * 1) Evaluating Content
 * 2) * Is everything in the article relevant to the article topic? Is there anything that distracted you?
 * 3) ** Reading through it, everything seems relevant and on topic.
 * 4) ** There wasnt anything that distracted me, it was all even laid out in a concise and logical manner
 * 5) * Is any information out of date? Is anything missing that could be added?
 * 6) ** There were old references but for the most part they were used to refer to things from the beginnings of the study of speciation and where it came from. There are a good amount of recent sources added
 * 7) Evaluating Tone
 * 8) * Is the article neutral? Are there any claims that appear heavily biased toward a particular position?
 * 9) ** As a whole the article is relatively neutaral in tone. It doesnt push the reader in any one way.
 * 10) * Are there viewpoints that are overrepresented, or underrepresented?
 * 11) ** I didnt find any viewpoints that were over or under represented
 * 12) Evaluating Sources
 * 13) * Check a few citations. Do the links work? Does the source support the claims in the article?
 * 14) ** Citation 1 - http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/102/suppl_1/6573.full.pdf
 * 15) *** Link works and it supports the claims of well cited species for speciation
 * 16) ** Citation 2 - http://www.genetics.org/content/163/3/939.long
 * 17) *** Link works and it supports the claims about the Apple Maggot Flies as well

Strategic Pluralism is the theory that when it comes to mating and reproduction, the females in a population will pool the males in one of two categories, those with good heritable genes, and those who will be good providers for them.

Strategic Pluralism
Strategic pluralism is a theory in evolutionary biology that suggests that women have evolved to evaluate men in two categories: whether they are reliable long term providers, and whether they contain high quality genes. Ideally, a woman would attract and pair-bond with a mate that has both long-term providing benefits, while also carrying quality genes that are inheritible by her offspring. But since men that excel in both categories are very rare to come by, not all women will be able to secure such a man. This leads to most women facing trade-offs in their mating choice. To solve the problem of these trade-offs, the theory of strategic pluralism says that women may have evolved to pursuit a dual-mating strategy, whereby they secure long-term investments from one mate, while securing high quality genes from another (extrapair) mate when they are ovulating. This Dual mating strategy would allow them to receive good genetic offspring while also having another mate who can assist with the parental responsibilities. This strategy allows for the females to get the most return on their investment into the relationship with the mate and ensure her genes have the highest possibility of being passed on to another generation. Although we have information about this phenomenon, a majority of it comes from psychology studies performed with human participants. While this is not ideal, it is the best way that we have been able to perform many studies. Some of the major studies done include looking at what different sexes prioritized when looking for a potential mate based on the proposed length of the relationship while another looked at whether there was a hormonal component that came from the type of birth control a woman was on. This topic is important for our continued learning of where all organisms came from and how they choose mates. With more information we would be able to explain in greater detail the finer points of mate selection and evolution as a whole.

Experimental Studies
Although this is an evolutionary process that is noted in animals and humans, a majority of the experiments done that involve the topic of Strategic Pluralism have been performed with humans. One experiment concluded that in short term vs long term relationships males and females prioritized different things. It was shown that Males and females both preferred attractiveness for short term mates, however females preferred males with traits that would lend to them being better caretakers while the males did not change their priorities. The way they determined this was through the use of a system where subjects were asked to assign points into different traits given an overall budget using a system the research group had constructed in a previous experiment. When the females were designing their long term mates they put a larger amount of points into the social level and kindness traits, agreeing with results found in other studies saying that females preferred long term mates who would provide for them and provide security as opposed to genetically better mates. The females also prefer males who can offer them more fiscal security when looking for a long term relationship, as this would allow them to receive more assistance when raising the offspring. Females have also chosen males who have more feminine appearances when looking for a long term mate which is explained by the relationship between facial attractiveness and how much effort the males put into raising the offspring. Males who have a more conventionally attractive face often put in less work as a caretaker while less attractive males will put in more work. On average, there is a wide amount of variability in males when compared to females, which would allow there to be males more suited for short term relationships and those more suited for longer relationships.

Another experiment concluded that there is a hormonal component to this phenomenon as well. This experiment consisted of two stages, the first involved having people walk in front of cameras to capture how they walked. The second part had a group of participants, wherein the females in the group were selected based on the form of Birth Control they used and were only allowed to participate if they were in the late Luteal Phase of menstruation which was verified using chemical tests which involved having these participants modify a hypothetical walker until they were as attractive as possible to them using the data obtained in the first half of this study. The type of Birth Control was important because the research group was looking at how hormones affected the resultant walk. In all, Females preferred a walk that was more masculine while females on hormonal Birth Control preferred a much more masculine walker than anyone else. This agrees with the idea that females can use apparent masculinity as a way of indirectly measuring the amount of testosterone a male has, where more masculine males would have a higher level of testosterone. While the females would want to find mates with a high level of testosterone during ovulation, outside of ovulation they look more for a mate that seems to be more feminine, thus seemingly preferring less masculine mates who would seem to be more apt as quality caretakers.