Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Behavioral Ecology (Joan Strassmann)/Dawkins study questions

Bio 372 Animal Behavior, Dawkins study questions Get back to course page

Dawkins, Chapter 1


 * 1) What role does consciousness have in governing altruistic behavior?
 * 2) Why are alarm calls altruistic?
 * 3) What is wrong with the argument that traits evolve for the good of the group or the species?
 * 4) What is individual selection?
 * 5) Does evolution work more rapidly between competing groups or between competing individuals?
 * 6) What is a unit of selection and what is the main one?  Why is this important?

Dawkins, Chapter 2


 * 1) What are replicators?  Why is error important in their copying?
 * 2) Outline the process of evolution using Dawkins’ terms.

Dawkins, Chapter 3


 * 1) Why are recombination and mutation events important?  What forms do they take?
 * 2) What is the genetic basis of one kind of variation in mimicry?
 * 3) What is natural selection?
 * 4) What are the pros and cons of viewing the individual or the gene as the main unit of selection?
 * 5) Outline the evolutionary argument for senescence.
 * 6) What are the evolutionary costs and benefits of sex.

Dawkins, Chapter 4


 * 1) How do genes influence behavior?
 * 2) How do honeybees vary in foulbrood susceptibility?
 * 3) What role does communication among individuals have to do with gene survival and replication?

Dawkins, Chapter 5


 * 1) How do individuals interact with other species?  Compare and contrast predator/prey interactions, host parasite interactions and competitors for the same resource for type of aggression, relative generation time, and coevolution.
 * 2) How do between species interactions differ from within species interactions?
 * 3) Why should an individual refrain from a fight to the death?
 * 4) How long should an individual continue to fight?
 * 5) When are fights to the death most likely to occur?
 * 6) When should fighting be delayed?
 * 7) What is an evolutionarily stable strategy?
 * 8) Is hawk/dove a model of within species or between species aggression?
 * 9) When will hawks not drive doves to extinction?
 * 10) If hawk and dove coexist at an ESS what would have higher fitness, a new baby with hawk or dove genotype?
 * 11) How do you assign values to display, escalation and victory?  What are the units?
 * 12) What is a conditional strategy?

Dawkins, Chapter 6


 * 1) What are all the ways selfish genes spread?
 * 2) What is green beard altruism?
 * 3) What does relatedness measure in terms of genes?
 * 4) What does Dawkins mean by baseline genes?
 * 5) What do aphids do that armadillos don't?  Why?
 * 6) What is the difference between kin selection and group selection?
 * 7) How does age enter into assessments of the value of helping relatives?
 * 8) What are the pros and cons of an adult male baboon defending babies against a leopard?
 * 9) Why do chicks twitter and not just cheep?
 * 10) When are eggs recognized and when not?
 * 11) How do cuckoos get away with their parasitism?
 * 12) Compare egg recognition in gulls and guillemots.
 * 13) Why don't guillemots share egg sitting?
 * 14) Why are Packer and Pusey's estimates of relatedness in lions more likely to be accurate than Bertram's?
 * 15) Why is care for children more common than care for siblings?

Dawkins, Chapter 7


 * 1) What is the difference between bearing and caring?  Why is this important?
 * 2) Why does it matter when individuals have children in assessing population growth?
 * 3) Why do lower-ranking individuals have a lower chance of reproducing?
 * 4) What is the Lack hypothesis?  Why was David Lack so important in early thinking about selfish genes?
 * 5) What factors might favor producing fewer eggs than one could rear to independence?
 * 6) Why don't birds fight territory holders to the death?
 * 7) Why does Dawkins view animals as gamblers, and in what sorts of games?
 * 8) Why do animals bear fewer babies than they can rear?  Why might they care for more than they bore?
 * 9) When do animals reduce their clutch size?  Which babies are they likely to remove, largest or smallest?
 * 10) What do animal "family planners" optimize?

Dawkins, Chapter 8


 * 1) What is parental investment?  Why is it measured in units of other offspring?
 * 2) If siblings are related to each other why should they be in conflict?
 * 3) Why might 2 sibs be more in conflict than two equal aged non-sibs?
 * 4) Why and when should a mother have favorites?  Is a short-lived mother more or less likely to have favorites than is a long-lived mother?
 * 5) Are runts evolved, or developmental accidents?  Why or why not?
 * 6) What is Dawkins explanation for menopause?  How might you test it?
 * 7) Who wins parent-offspring conflict and why?  What are the important variables?
 * 8) When would a young animal prefer to die than to increase risk to siblings?
 * 9) Use Hamilton's rule to express the area where mothers and progeny are in conflict.
 * 10) Use Hamilton's rule to express the area where siblings are in conflict with each other.
 * 11) How do Cuckoos fool parents?
 * 12) Why does Dawkins think that baby swallows push siblings, not cuckoos out of the nest?
 * 13) What is wrong with Alexander's argument about parental control?  When are parents likely to win?
 * 14) Why should a child fool a mother?

Dawkins, Chapter 9


 * 1) What is Fisher's argument for equal investment in the sexes?
 * 2) What is the difference between investment in males and females, and numbers of males and females?
 * 3) How does parental care influence the sex ratio?
 * 4) Under what mating system is male mortality likely to be greater than female mortality and why?
 * 5) Why do female mice evolve to abort when they smell a new male?  Why do lions wait for infanticide to do the job?
 * 6) Discuss all the costs and benefits of long courtships for both males and females.
 * 7) When should males and females be honest and when deceitful?
 * 8) If one parent deserts should the other stay and rear the babies?  Why or why not?
 * 9) Why does faithful and philanderer cycle?  (Be sure to look at footnotes at back.)
 * 10) What are the advantages and disadvantages to fastness and coyness in females?
 * 11) What is the runaway selection hypothesis?
 * 12) What is the handicap hypothesis?
 * 13) How is the disease hypothesis related to the handicap hypothesis?
 * 14) In what sense are ornaments handicaps?
 * 15) What sorts of males should females avoid mating with?
 * 16) What is Dawkins argument that females should choose males on the basis of erection quality all about?  What are its weaknesses?
 * 17) Exactly how can long tails evolve through the process of runaway selection?
 * 18) How might we distinguish the runaway selection process from the handicap process?
 * 19) Why shouldn't a femlae copulate with any old male because even lek holders or victors of male male competition are likely to be victorious because they are younger?

Dawkins, Chapters 10-13


 * 1) What is an evolutionary explanation for mixed species flocks?
 * 2) Why do fish school? Give two different reasons.
 * 3) How can grouping in the absence of kin selection be advantageous?
 * 4) What are the strengths and weaknesses of Dawkin's superorganism analogy for social insects?
 * 5) Why are social hymenoptera sisters related by 0.75?
 * 6) What is the difference between kin selection and the haplodiploid hypothesis? Which one has been proven to be correct and why?
 * 7) What did Trivers and Hare predict and why?
 * 8) Who controls hymenopteran sex ratios and in whose interests is this?
 * 9) Why don't slave making ants have female biased sex ratios?
 * 10) Why might queens of honeybees mate multiply, thereby 'throwing away' the haplodiploid advantage?
 * 11) What conditions are necessary for reciprocal altruism to evolve?  What sorts of behavior is it most suited for?
 * 12) When are grudgers and suckers indistinguishable?
 * 13) What modifications are made to prisoner's dilemma to use it to model reciprocal altruism?
 * 14) Why and with whom do vampire bats share blood?  How could you tell whether it is really reciprocal altruism or just overlap from sharing food with relatives?
 * 15) Why is meiotic drive such as is caused by t alleles in mice against the interests of most of the genome?
 * 16) What is wrong with the view that DNA is a device for organisms to reproduce themselves?
 * 17) What are the similarities and differences in genes for caddisfly houses, lobster shells and snail shells?
 * 18) Why do flukes cause snails to produce thicker snail shells?
 * 19) Why do plasmid genes share fewer interests with nuclear genes than nuclear genes share among themselves?
 * 20) What sorts of behavioral information would you want about a parasite to predict its impact on its host's behavior?
 * 21) Why would a bird ever feed anyone in a different nest?
 * 22) What are the similarities and differences in selection in a pack of wolves, a honeybee colony and nuclear vs. cytoplasmic genes?

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