All flashcards
Flashcard 1: What is the many-eyes hypothesis for group living?
Answer: More individuals detect predators sooner, increasing group survival. More group members means faster predator detection overall.
Flashcard 2: Which option best supports thermoregulation advantage: lower metabolic rate in huddles or higher parasite rate?
Answer: Lower metabolic rate in huddles. Lower metabolic rates demonstrate energy savings from group thermoregulation.
Flashcard 3: Identify the correct claim if group size increases and per-capita food decreases while survival stays constant.
Answer: Competition costs rise; net advantage is uncertain without reproduction data. Increased competition may offset other benefits of group living.
Flashcard 4: What is a common foraging-related advantage of social behavior?
Answer: Increased food-finding efficiency via information sharing. Group members share information about food locations.
Flashcard 5: What is a thermoregulation advantage of social behavior in cold environments?
Answer: Huddling reduces heat loss and lowers energy expenditure. Shared body heat reduces individual energy costs in cold conditions.
Flashcard 6: What is cooperative breeding?
Answer: Nonbreeders help raise offspring, increasing offspring survival. Helpers assist parents, improving offspring survival and success.
Flashcard 7: What is alloparenting?
Answer: Care of offspring by individuals other than the genetic parents. Non-parents provide care, benefiting offspring and sometimes themselves.
Flashcard 8: What is a disease-related cost that can reduce advantages of group living?
Answer: Higher pathogen transmission due to close contact and density. Close contact in groups facilitates disease spread between individuals.
Flashcard 9: Which option is the best fitness measure when evaluating social behavior advantages?
Answer: Number of surviving offspring that later reproduce. Reproductive success is the ultimate measure of evolutionary fitness.
Flashcard 10: Which type of selection explains altruism toward close relatives?
Answer: Kin selection. Relatives share genes, making helping them evolutionarily beneficial.
Flashcard 11: What is a key condition required for reciprocal altruism to be favored by selection?
Answer: Repeated interactions with ability to recognize and punish cheaters. Recognition and punishment prevent exploitation of helpful individuals.
Flashcard 12: Which conclusion is supported if individuals in larger groups spend less time scanning and more feeding?
Answer: Group vigilance reduces individual vigilance costs, improving foraging time. Shared vigilance allows individuals to allocate more time to feeding.
Flashcard 13: Identify the most likely cost if larger groups show higher parasite loads but similar food intake.
Answer: Increased disease transmission is a cost of group living. Higher parasite loads indicate disease transmission costs of grouping.
Flashcard 14: Which option indicates kin selection rather than reciprocity: helping siblings or helping unrelated strangers once?
Answer: Helping siblings. Helping relatives indicates selection based on genetic relatedness.
Flashcard 15: What is mutualism in the context of social behavior?
Answer: A social interaction that increases fitness of all participating individuals. All participants benefit, making cooperation stable and advantageous.
Flashcard 16: Identify the correct interpretation if helpers increase fledgling survival but do not reproduce that season.
Answer: Helping can increase inclusive fitness if beneficiaries are relatives. Helpers gain inclusive fitness through relatives' reproductive success.
Flashcard 17: Which option indicates reciprocal altruism: repeated help between nonrelatives or one-time help to offspring?
Answer: Repeated help between nonrelatives. Repeated exchange between non-relatives indicates reciprocal cooperation.
Flashcard 18: What is altruism in evolutionary terms?
Answer: A behavior that benefits another individual while costing the actor fitness. Actor pays a cost while recipient gains a benefit.
Flashcard 19: What is meant by cost–benefit analysis of a social behavior?
Answer: Comparing fitness costs to fitness benefits to predict selection outcomes. Determines whether natural selection favors or opposes the behavior.
Flashcard 20: What is dominance hierarchy?
Answer: Ranked social order that influences access to resources and mates. Social rank determines priority access to valuable resources.
Flashcard 21: What is a proximate explanation for social behavior?
Answer: Immediate mechanisms such as hormones, neural circuits, and development. Focuses on how behavior works mechanistically in the individual.
Flashcard 22: What is an ultimate explanation for social behavior?
Answer: Evolutionary function explaining how behavior increases fitness. Focuses on why the behavior evolved and its fitness benefits.
Flashcard 23: What is a common line of evidence that social behavior is advantageous?
Answer: Higher survival or reproductive output in social versus solitary individuals. Compares fitness outcomes between social and solitary strategies.
Flashcard 24: Which option is strongest evidence of information sharing: naïve individuals find food faster after joining groups?
Answer: Naïve individuals find food faster after joining groups. Improved foraging success demonstrates information transfer within groups.
Flashcard 25: Identify the best conclusion if group-living animals have higher survival only when predators are present.
Answer: Anti-predator benefits are context-dependent and drive social advantage. Context-dependency shows specific conditions where sociality provides benefits.
Flashcard 26: Which option best indicates mutualism rather than altruism: both individuals gain or one gains at a cost?
Answer: Both individuals gain. Mutual benefit distinguishes mutualism from one-sided altruism.
Flashcard 27: Identify the confound if healthier individuals both join groups and survive longer.
Answer: Preexisting health status confounds the sociality–survival relationship. Health status affects both group joining and survival outcomes.
Flashcard 28: Which study design most strongly supports a causal advantage of social behavior?
Answer: Controlled experiment manipulating group size or social access. Experiments control variables to establish causal relationships.
Flashcard 29: What is a confounding variable in studies of social behavior advantages?
Answer: A third factor correlated with group living and the measured outcome. Confounds can create false correlations between sociality and outcomes.
Flashcard 30: What is a competition-related cost of social behavior?
Answer: Increased competition for food, mates, or nesting sites. Group members compete for the same limited resources.