The City University of New York ANIMAL BEHAVIOR II (PSY U718 and BIO U724.03) Professors Jennifer Basil and Peter Moller Midterm-Examination

Due date: March 31 st by 1800h the latest Electronic submission to both JB and PM as PC MS-Word files (combine all answers in one file: last name_ABII_MT.doc); make sure to use the 2003 .doc format.

1. Use Times New Roman 12 pt; 1” margins all around; double-spaced 2. The page-limitation is 5 pages per answer (excluding references and figures, if applicable). We reserve the right to stop reading after this limit. 3. Use the readings and papers in the syllabus to substantiate your answers and provide appropriated citations “(author, year)” in the text. You can also use Web of Science or EBSCO to find appropriate literature. We will disallow references from Wikipedia . 4. Following each answer, you must provide a reference list for all citations (format: Author, Year, Title, Journal, page numbers). Always try to cite primary sources; avoid references to books or comprehensive reviews; as a last resort you may cite our text, Goodenough et al. with page number). We will accept both APA (American Psychological Association) and AIBS (American Institute of Biological Sciences) style formats. 5. Academic honesty. “The Graduate Center of The City University of New York is committed to the highest standards of academic honesty. Acts of academic dishonesty include, but are not limited to plagiarism (in drafts, outlines, and examinations, as well as final papers), cheating, bribery, academic fraud, sabotage of research materials, the sale of academic papers, and the falsification of records. An individual who engages in these or related activities or who knowingly aids another who engages in them is acting in an academically dishonest manner and will be subject to disciplinary action in accordance with the bylaws and procedures of The Graduate Center and of the Board of Trustees of The City University of New York.” (CUNY Student Handbook). . Please answer the following FIVE questions (20 pts each) Question 1 The concepts of ethology were formally established by K. Lorenz and N. Tinbergen in the 1930’s and provided the framework for work on animal behavior conducted by scientists trained in Europe, notably the UK, Netherlands, and Germany. After WWII, these concepts were challenged by American comparative psychologists (e.g. D. Lehrman) and deemed inadequate to study the origins of behavior. From our readings and/or papers select two examples of vertebrate reproductive behavior (one avian and one mammalian). (A) Pretend you are K. Lorenz: (a) discuss for each example the questions you are interested in answering, (b) apply the underlying conceptual bases, (c) discuss applicable methodology, and (d) make a brief statement about how your findings answered your questions. (B) Pretend you are D. Lehrman: follow the same procedure as for (A). (C) Briefly sketch the major issues that distinguish the two conceptual frameworks, and discuss whether there is a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, or whether this is a non-question.

Question 2 Since we currently cannot go back in time to observe the evolution of a behavior directly, ethologists have developed a number of methods to do so with extant groups of animals. a) Discuss the fundamentals of how we should shape our questions about the evolution of behavior and our choice of species, in the context of Hodos and Campbell’s Scala naturae. What were their main critiques with “comparative psychology” at the time? If you do a quick literature search of “comparative behavioral study” do you find any that still use “inappropriate” sets of species? What would you say as constructive criticism in a review of a “cat, rat, and man” paper if you had to write one? b) How does one control properly for phylogenetic history in a comparative study? How does one discriminate between a homologous behavior and homoplasy? c) Discuss one of the papers presented in class in Week 2 (Thornton et al., Winkler et al., Kennedy et al., or Branham et al.). Do you think the authors chose the best species available for their question? Do you think they avoided the list of common errors in scala naturae?

Question 3 Autumn et al (2002) give a number of examples of how to integrate phylogeny and mechanism into comparative studies. The phenomenon of “pre-existing sensory bias” is raised in this article and in a few systems we discussed in class. a) Do you think they have made a strong case for this phenomenon? Please justify your answer. b) Discuss a few alternate hypotheses to explain a pre-existing sensory bias that you might want to test, for example in swordtails or Tungara frogs?

Question 4 Another approach to studying adaptive value is the Optimality approach, since it allows researchers to make quantitative predictions. a) What is the major assumption of the Optimality approach? Do you think it is justified or useful? If not, do you think that renders the entire approach useless, as some critics of the “adaptationist approach” have said? Is this alternative assumption useful? b) Often precise measurements of “fitness benefits” of behavioral traits are not possible, and researchers use “proxies” instead. Describe at least 2 examples of optimality approaches to behavior that use proxies (from your readings and class). Given direct measures of number of offspring surviving to adulthood is often not possible, do you think the researchers have chosen an appropriate measure? c) As Dr. Hauber described, proxy measures (clutch size in one year) can sometimes fail to predict what is actually going on in a system --- describe the example he gave where predictions of behavioral tactics based upon using the proxy (clutch size) differed from the outcome based upon the real measure (lifetime fitness)? d) One assumption in Optimality Theory is that animals have access to information about their environment or decisions. How do Dall et al, (2005) discriminate among the different kinds of information?

Question 5 Is life in groups adaptive? Why or why not? What determines what size group is best? How can you test the hypothesis that life in groups is adaptive for a given species?