Principles Of Social Evolution - Animal Behavior

Starlings sometimes assemble in large flocks that, in the evening, rise up in whirling flight together for 15 or 20 minutes in what looks like some kind of display. V.C. Wynne-Edwards suggested that this behavior is indeed a display that enables individual birds to assess just how many fellow starlings are living in the area so that they can adjust their breeding effort in the upcoming breeding season. In this way, they can avoid producing too many chicks and thereby avoid overpopulating their home range. This a group selectionist hypothesis because

A) the idea is that starlings could evaluate the size of their local population or group.
B) the flight behavior of the flock is something that cannot be explained in terms of any benefits to individuals and, thus, must be beneficial for the group.
C) starlings do breed in such a manner as to avoid overpopulation.
D) the suggestion is that the birds engage in costly behaviors in order to make decisions that are advantageous for other unrelated starlings.

Answer

Question 2

(Multiple Choice)

Free

Professor Reynolds claims that when male emperor penguins stand in the Antarctic winter, each with an egg cradled between his feet and his belly, the males' parental behavior is "altruistic." Reynolds is _______ because _______.

A) correct; the males run some risk of dying during the long incubation period and so incur a fitness cost by being parental
B) correct; the behavior, although risky, provides the help that is necessary to preserve the species over time
C) incorrect; each male is incubating his own egg, not someone else's
D) incorrect; even though the behavior is costly, males have no option except to behave in this manner because of their high parental hormone levels

Answer

Question 3

(Multiple Choice)

Free

In the bees, ants, and wasps (Hymenoptera), female workers are very closely related to their reproducing sisters only if their mother has mated with just one male because

A) they will share exactly the same genetic information that makes up the paternal contribution to their genome.
B) all of the daughters of a queen receive one-half their genome from their mother, whose eggs are genetically three-fourths alike.
C) all females with the same mother are the product of a union between a haploid egg and a diploid sperm.
D) three-fourths of the genomes of sisters come from their mother, and one-fourth come from their father.

Answer