Handouts
On the Monday and Tuesday sections (week of March 1) we conducted a Quiz Show intended to have fun reviewing the notes from class and getting the feel for the bare essentials for the exam. The Tuesday section typed up the questions and answers from the debate. Here they are courtesy of Eric B. Soffer:

Game Time
Q: What are the five principles (assumptions) of Behavioral Ecology
A: Assume behavior is adaptive
The effects of the current environment on behavior
Reproductive success as currency of adaptiveness
Assume everything evolves due to natural selection
Ultimate level questions

Q: Complete the sentence: Behavioral Ecology is
A: The study of the survival value of behavior

Q: What type of question would a behavioral ecologist ask when studying tail-flagging in ground squirrels?
A: How does this behavior evolve? What are the costs and benefits of the behavior?

Q: What is the relationship between male and female reproductive success according to the Bateman principle?
A: Graph: On X-axis is # of mates, on Y-axis is Reproductive success. Males have a linear increasing relationship, whereas females have a linear increasing relationship which plateaus (from 2/9/04). Also, Bateman's curves on the variance of reproductive success for males and females.

Q: What experiment challenged the Bateman principle by showing that female reproductive success is greater than male reproductive success?
A: Pipefish / seahorses (Sygnathidae)à males carry young, so males have a greater reproductive success.

Q: Muller?s 1984 Barn Swallow experiment (forked-tail) provides conclusive evidence that females prefer symmetrical males. True or False?
A: False. The data was misconstrued because the longer a male?s tail, the less a length difference between the two sides caused asymmetry. The females actually preferred longer average tail length

Q: Describe Crook and Gartlan?s 1966 study of primate foraging behavior. Why was this study criticized?
A: They just did a correlational study, didn't prove anything, and mostly did adaptive story telling. The experiment did not test scientifically.

Q: Complete the sentence: The definition of sexual selection is?
A: Sexual selection is a subset of natural selection that deals with acquiring attractive mates. The first person to talk about sexual selection was Darwin.

Winner: clitoris
(note: this is a reference to the name of the group that won. The other names selected by the groups (inspired in the Hyena Colony trip) were meatus, ospenis, among others. )