Handouts
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Article: Brown, Kevin M. 1998. Proximate and Ultimate causes of adoption in ring-billed gulls. Animal Behavior 56:1529-1543.
This article may be found on line through the electronic journals section of the Biosciences Library. You may have to access this from a campus computer. It is now available locally, though you will need the user and password given in class.

Assignment: Read the full article. Then, in NO MORE THAN TWO DOUBLE-SPACED PAGES, let us know what you think. You are old pros after writing about bowerbird decorations in Critique 1. We are looking for more of the same in this assignment, and the hints from the previous assignment still make a good starting point. This time, the paper focuses on two distinct aspect of adoption behavior (costs and benefits to either the parent or the offspring). If you are worried about not having enough space to cover everything, you may focus on one of these two points of view- just be sure to state explicitly which you are addressing in your critique.
Some other pointers, based on looking at the first critique:

1) In your introduction, make sure you convey an understanding of the theory driving the study. In the opinion of the authors, why is this study important? What is the big picture, before you dive into the specific hypotheses?

2) Read the article carefully! Don’t say ‘the author didn’t do X’ when its right there in black and white!

3) A potential criticism will be even more effective if you can relate it back to the results or the conclusions of the paper. So you didn’t like how the author did something. Why is it important to the message of the paper? How would you solve the problem differently?

4) Make sure you give us enough context so we can follow your arguments. It will be easier to say how something was done wrong when you first say how it was actually carried out in the paper.

5) Begin to think about how you write. As IB majors, many of you do not get enough practice with writing. Take this opportunity to work on this side of things as well.

6) Since a) you’ve been through this once before and b) you have two weeks to complete this assignment, we may grade this one a little bit more rigorously.

Good luck!