Part A: Short Answer Questions (40 marks) 

 

1. Below are six statements related to the observation that many songbirds learn to sing their species song, instead of producing it "automatically" when they are mature. Label each following statement as either a hypothesis (H), or a prediction (P). (6 marks) 

 

1. Male white-crowned sparrows learn their song early in life in order to demonstrate their brain quality to potential mates later on.  
2. Brain development and thus, the ability to learn a song, should be should be negatively affected by poor growth conditions early in life.
3. We expect females to approach taped songs recorded from males that grew up under excellent conditions.
4. Male birds that are able to learn their songs can mimic those of their immediate neighbours, which facilitates effective communication among rival males. 
5. White-crowned sparrows that are deprived of food early in life should not be able to copy the songs they hear as well as males that receive abundant food during the 10-50 day-old stage.
6. Young males that leave their birthplace should be able to shift the dialect they sing to match that of their neighbours in a new location.

 

2. A spider researcher Pia Stålhandske knew that males of Pisaura mirabilis offer their mates a nuptial gift, a prey item, such as a cricket, whose acceptance by the female is critical for male mating success. Males wrap their generally dark coloured gifts in white silk. Stålhandske wondered if the males wrapped their gifts in order to make them look like the white, silk-covered egg sacs that mated females make and hold in their jaws to protect until the spiderlings hatch. (4 marks) 

 

i. The last sentence in the paragraph above constitutes:  

1. A causal question 
2. A hypothesis 
3. A prediction 
4. Test evidence

 

ii. What theory was Stålhandske using to explore this species' courtship behaviour? 

 

 

iii. Which of the following predictions might Stålhandske have felt was likely to be correct, given her presumption that males might be making their nuptial gifts look like eggs sacs? 

 

1. The time for a female to accept a nuptial gift should be less for prey covered in silk that has been experimentally coloured brown instead of white.  
2. Natural silk-covered prey should be comparable in light reflectance to silken egg sacs. 
3. Females ought to be highly prepared to grab and hold silken egg sacs that had been taken from them but then offered back as if they were a nuptial gift. 

 

 

3. Deceptive signalling is widespread in nature with, for example, certain orchids luring pollinator wasps to them with flower petals that smell like receptive female wasps. This case is a Darwinian puzzle because: (2 marks) 

1. The proportion of orchid flowers that set fruit as result of successful pollination is actually pretty small. 
2. Natural selection ought to favour discriminating behaviour on the part of male wasps so that they do not waste time, energy, and even sperm on orchid flowers. 
3. Time and energy spent on orchids reduces the capacity of the wasp population to grow, since the deceptive plants slow the ability of male wasps to fertilize all the eggs of their females. 
4. It is next to impossible to figure out how orchid flowers evolved to smell like the females of certain wasps. 

 

4. Below are ten hypotheses about why male white-crowned sparrows sing dialects. For each one, decide whether it is a genetic-developmental (G) explanation, a physiological-psychological explanation (P), an adaptive value explanation (AV) or one relating to evolutionary history (EH). In addition, flag those explanations that are based on group selection theory (GS). (10 marks) 

1. It is difficult to learn a dialect, which enables females to mate with only those males with good dialects so as to improve the breeding stock of the species. 
2. White-crowned sparrows evolved from an ancestral species that possessed the capacity for song learning. 
3. Males in different populations have different forms of certain genes that influence the development of the song system.
4. The ability to sing the local dialect enables a bird to form bonds with others in the area so that they can adjust their total reproductive output, reducing the risk of local overpopulation.  
5. Males in different populations are exposed to different songs, an experience that influences the kind of song that the birds learn.
6. The differences among dialects are environmentally determined, not genetically controlled.
7. Males in different populations have song systems in their brains that operate slightly differently.
8. By being able to sing the local dialect, a male is able to communicate territorial ownership of a breeding site to rival males more effectively.
9. Young adult white-crowned sparrows are motivated to match their song as closely as possible to that of their neighbours.
10. Young white-crowned sparrows are primed hormonally during a particular stage of their life to record acoustical information from singing males of their own species. 

 

5. When a tropical moth of the genus Automeris is touched on the thorax it lifts its forewings up abruptly, exposing its brightly coloured hind wings. What causes the moth to behave this way? For each explanation, first identify whether it focuses on a proximate or ultimate cause. Then label each explanation as: genetic-developmental (G), physiological-psychological (P), evolutionary history (EH), or adaptive value (AV). (8 marks) 

1. The behaviour is instinctive. 
2. Wing flipping scares some predators away. 
3. The behaviour is the product of a special set of muscle contractions. 
4. The behaviour is a modified version of wing movements that many moths use to raise their body temperature in order to begin flying. 

6. If an experimenter is able to select for increased barking in a population of domesticated dogs over four generations, then: (2 marks) 

1. There must have been genetic variation relevant to the development of barking in the initial population in the experiment. 
2. Barking is probably very important to the reproductive success of dogs. 
3. We have proof that natural selection and artificial selection are somewhat different. 
4. The experimenter has shown that if dogs were to return to the wild, the population would evolve toward a higher level of barking in nature as well. 

7. Garter snakes only recently invaded California and have evolved the ability to eat slugs since that recent invasion. This tells us definitively that (2 marks) 

1. Evolution acts to expand the diets of animals to buffer the species against changes in food supply that might lead to extinction. 
2. The early slug-accepting garter snakes must have survived better on average than those that lacked this ability in the early populations in California. 
3. Every slug-accepting garter snake had higher reproductive success than all the slug-rejecting snakes generation after generation, until there were no more slug-rejecters in California.
4. None of the above 

8. Testosterone is apparently a very costly hormone for males to produce and use. Why then, has natural selection resulted in the males of some many species investing in the production and use of this hormone? (2 marks) 

1. Because natural selection cannot override the effects of shared ancestry; because male animal share a common ancestor that used testosterone adaptively, they continue to do so today. 
2. Because testosterone helps insure that males will be motivated to search for and to find all the receptive females of their species, thereby increasing the odds that the females will all be able to produce some offspring. 
3. Because under a variety of circumstances, the hormone makes is possible for males to be either aggressive or sexually motivated in highly adaptive ways. 
4. Because males that are able to pay the price for producing and using testosterone are demonstrating that they are able to overcome this handicap, which means that they are genetically worthy members of the breeding stock for their population. 

 

 

Part B: Long Answer Questions (60 marks) Based on what you have learned so far, consider the following questions.

1. Honey bee queens produce a complex olfactory signal, the queen pheromone, which they use either to control the workers, forcing them to keep working for the queen, or to provide accurate information about the reproductive state of the queen, making it adaptive for workers to be altruists (by helping them determine that the queen is capable of producing many siblings of the workers). Which of these hypotheses is more congruent with the logic of natural selection theory? Which hypothesis is supported by the discovery that components of the queen pheromone are related to the volume of sperm stored in the queen and her ovarian function? For a full and fair evaluation of the two competing hypotheses, see Kocher and Grozinger. (20 marks) 
2. Several researchers have wondered whether bird songs have changed in cities in response to traffic noise, which is made up primarily of low-frequency sounds (e.g., Slabbekoorn and den Boer-Visser and Luther and Baptista). In one such study, the authors documented the minimum sound frequency employed in three dialects of white-crowned sparrow song recorded over a 30-year period in San Francisco (Figure 10.21 in the textbook). Reconstruct the science behind this research from the question that stimulated the study to the conclusion the authors must have reached. (20 marks) 
3. Males of certain Australian beetles have been seen trying to copulate with everything from beer bottles to large orange signs (Figure 12.6 in the textbook). Apply ethological terminology to these cases by identifying the releaser, the fixed action pattern, and the innate releasing mechanism. Then develop an ultimate hypothesis to account for what clearly is maladaptive behaviour on the part of these obtuse beetles (which sometimes die rather than leave the inanimate and unresponsive copulatory partners that they have chosen). (20 marks) 
4. Inhibitory neural messages often play a key role in organizing the behaviour of an animal, as the mantis demonstrates. Mature female crickets (Gryllus bimaculatus) approach chirping males. About one hour after mating, during which the male transfers a spermatophore to his partner, the female stops tracking the calls of males of her species. If you found that emptying the sperm storage organ caused the female to resume responding to calling males, you could speculate on how the female cricket's nervous system controlled this aspect of her behaviour. How might inhibitory messages be involved? What is the adaptive significance of this proximate mechanism? (20 marks)

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