Wikipedia:United States Education Program/Courses/Behavioral Ecology (Joan Strassmann)/Strassmann 2011 PNAS study questions

'''Study questions on: Cooperation and competition in a cliff-dwelling people Beverly I. Strassmann PNAS 2011. 108:10894 - 10901''' www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1100306108

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1.	What does cooperative breeding mean for humans? What is the evidence in the Maya, the Finns, and the Hadza? What is your impression for your family? 2.	What traits make the Dogon good for studies of evolutionary cooperation and conflict? Name five traits and why they matter. 3.	What does the cooperative breeding hypothesis predict for siblings? Are the predictions upheld? Why or why not? 4.	How does the Lack hypothesis (look it up if you don’t remember it) explain Dogon birth rates and survivorship? 5.	Figure 2 shows that women compared to men do more child care in fields and villages, more work in the village, and the same amount of work in the fields. How do you explain this? 6.	How does a work-eat group differ from a nuclear family? How do these data test the “it takes a village” hypothesis? What are the results? 7.	What variables impact child survivorship under age 5? Why? 8.	What is the relevant difference of relatedness of male work-eat group heads to child survival? 9.	If you have to have co-wives, is it better to be the first or the last wife and why? 10.	 Are Dogon matrilocal or patrilocal? Does this matter for hypotheses discussed here and why? Choose one hypothesis to explain. 11.	Why do you think the researchers find that paternal grandparents decrease child survivorship? Why don’t maternal grandparents matter? 12.	Why might maternal grandmothers prefer granddaughters? What is the local resource competition hypothesis? (Look it up on Davies, Krebs and West). 13.	Summarize how kin selection theory does or does not explain mortality in Dogon children.