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56 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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The whole of evolutionay psychology (EP) is based on the premise that __________.
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behaviour is driven by adaptations.
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What is a 'just so story' in evolutionary biology?
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An evolutionary account for a trait that is easily constructed to explain the evidence but makes few predictions that are open to testing.
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What is the idea of 'Panglossianism' in evolutionary biology?
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That not everything happens for a reason or for a good reason - not everything is an adaptation.
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Give two reasons why a trait may be genetic but not adaptive (currently).
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1 Phylogenetic inertia - Organisms show signs of an ancestry thay are unable to completely escape from - moths to a bright zapper, human back pain from vertical posture.
2 Genetic drift - Some genetic polymorphism may exist in a population as a result of chance mutations that are neither advantagious nor disadvantageous or have not yet had time to be weeded out by natural selection. |
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Define genetic drift.
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A change in the frequency of alleles in a population due to chance alone (as opposed to selection).
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Define founder effect.
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If a new group of organisms is formed from a few in a larger population, the new group is likely to have less genetic variation and have an average genotype that may be shifted in some direction even though the shift was not the result of natural selection.
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What are two explanations for behaviors that are adaptive but not genetic?
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1 Phenotype plasticity - moulded by external influences during ontogeny to suit the prevailing environmental conditions
2 - Learning |
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What is Williams definition of an adaptation? (3 parts)
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1-a characteristic that has arisen through and been shaped by natural and/or sexual selection
2 - It regularly develops in members of the same species because it helped solve problems of survival and reproduction in the evolutionary ancestry of the organism 3 - Therefore it has a genetic basis. |
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According to Williams what 3 criteria must a trait possess to be considered an adaptation?
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Reliability, Economy and Efficiency.
Reliability - occurs in all members of species Economy - if the characteristic serves an adaptive purpose without a huge cost Efficiency - the trait must solve the adaptive problem well |
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What are the 2 different methods of testing hypotheses about adaptations proposed by Buss?
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Theory-down and Observation-driven hypotheses.
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What is a theory-down hypothesis?
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A higher level theory (a big idea) generates testable hypotheses. If these testable (lower) hypotheses prove correct they support the higher level theory.
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What is observation-driven theorizing?
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Sometimes called reverse engineering. Finding a theory that fits the observable facts.
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Define reverse engineering.
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A way of thinking about the consequences of evolution. It starts with a contemporary understanding of the function of adaptive behavioural or physiological attributes and tries to infer what problems our ancestors faced to give rise to these adaptive solutions.
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What is adaptive significance?
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The way in which the existence of a physical or behavioural feature can be related to the function it served and may continue to serve in helping an animal to survive and reproduce.
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What are the two basic schools of thought on evolved human behaviours?
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The Evolutionary psychologists (Santa Barbara church of psychology) that argue that the human mind only evolved to handle problems in the EEA (before culture even existed) or
The Biological Anthropologists that argue that the EEA gave us minds flexible enough to still give rise to behaiours that still maximise our reproductive fitness in current environments. This group might also be called Darwinian Anthropologists. |
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Why do evolutionary psychologists say that our behaviors were fixed by the EEA and that our current behaviors are often maladaptive (or have no adaptive value) in our current environments?
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Because the mind is not and never was a general use machine. It evolved different modules to handle different and highly specific problems in the EEA.
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What do Darwinian Anthropologists say about the human mind and the EEA.
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Ancestral adaptation was not so specific and that we possess 'domain-general' mechanisms that allow us to maximise our fitness even in the different environment(s) of today.
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_________ advises that we should assume a basic similarity between ancient and contemporary environments with respect to particular adaptations, unless there are signs of stress and manfunction in humans, or the behaviour is rare in the ethnographic record, or unusual reproductive consequences are observed. - Why?
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Crawford (1993) because our culture and institutions are built by us.
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What is the hierarchy of Linnaen taxa?
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King Phyl Comes Over for Great Sex
Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species |
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What are the three major schools of thought regarding the classification of species?
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Phenetics (class by morphological and anatomical similarites), cladistics (group by common ancestry) and evolutionary systematics (elements from both above).
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Define Cladistics.
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A means of producing a phylogenetic classification.. In cladistics, a group shares a more recent common ancester than members of a different group.
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Define Taxonomy
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The theory and practice of classifying organisms.
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What is a Hominid.
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Any member of the family Hominidae, which includes humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and all their extinct ancestors. The term is open to variable interpretation, depending on which classification system is accepted.
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What is a Hominin?
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A member of the subfamily Homininae. Includes extant humans and extinct precursor species following the breakaway from the chipmanzee lineage some 7 million years ago. The term is open to variable interpretation, depending on which classification system is accepted.
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When did the human lineage break away from chimps?
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About 7 million years ago.
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What are 4 important features of primates that distinguish them from other mammals?
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1 - grasping hand and feet (opposable thumbs)
2 - nails not claws 3 - Eyes set in front giving stereoscopic vision 4 - Noses smaller - sense of smell diminished. |
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Define precocial.
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A term applied to species whose young are born relatively mature and mobile from the moment of birth. The opposite of precocial is altricial.
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Define altricial.
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Refers to offspring that are born in a state of helplessness, requiring constant care and attention. Humans are an alticial species and so are many types of birds.
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Define speciation (what Darwin and followers called transmutation).
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The creation of a new species through the splitting of an existing species into two or more new species.
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When and where did the Great Rift Valley form?
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15 million years ago separating a slice of Eastern Africa from the rest of the continent (not completely).
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What is allopatric speciation?
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Sometimes known as geographic speciation. A process by which two populations of the same species become geographically isolated and in time form two groups that can no longer interbreed and hence tow or more new species.
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What is also known as geographic speciation?
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Allopatric speciation.
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What is the significance of the formation of the Great Rift Valley.
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It changed the local environments into a greater variety giving rise to more species and probably bipedelism.
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Why might have mammalian bodies gotten larger during the Miocene?
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Cooling episodes: Large bodies run at lower metabolic rates and are more capable of surviving in low temperatures.
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What came first: bipedalism or large brains?
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Bipedalism.
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What are the 4 theories that Cartwright gives as examples of explanations for bipedalism?
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1 - Man the hunter-scavenger (but hominin's vegetarians until 1.8 mya; long after bipedalism developed)
2 - Improved predator avoidance - see over the tall grasses 3 - Woman the gatherer and foraging efficiency - scarcity of resources led to greater home ranges and need for more efficient locomotion 4 - Reduced exposure to sunlight |
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Bipedalism began
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about 7 million years ago as hominins branched away from chimps.
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What is the difference in our DNA from that of chimps?
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1.6 percent
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The Taung child was discovered in _________ and is of the species _____________.
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In 1925 in Africa by Raymond Dart - Australopithicus africanus
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Australopithicus africanus was discovered in 1925 and is commonly referred to as
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The Taung child
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When was Lucy found?
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In 1974 by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray.
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Lucy is what type of Australopithicus? And is it older or younger than the Taung child?
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Australopiticus Afarensis. It is older by approximately 800,000 years.
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Since the brain size of A. afarensis is comparable to modern gorillas and chimps but body size was smaller...
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Brain expansion was already underway at the of A. afarensis.
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Name the order of the early hominins.
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Australopithecus afarensis, A. africanus, Homo habilis, Homo ergaster, Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo neanderthalis, Homo sapiens
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list the 5 major trends seen in the hominin fossil record.
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1 - Increase in body size from Australopithecine speices to the Homo genus
2 - Increasing bipedalism 3 - Rapid increases in brain size in the Homo genus 4 - Decrease in sexual dimorphism from Australopithecines to the Homo genus 5 - Transition to the Homo genus accompanied by an increased reliance on meat. |
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The reduced sexual dimorphism between Australopithecines and Homo's points to
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a changed social and reproductive system. Males no longer competed for females and females did what it took to keep a partner around to help provision her and her offspring. This is 2.3 mya.
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What is sometimes called Cope's Law?
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That as mammals evolve there is a tendency for them to grow in size.
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What is exogamy?
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The practice of mating with someone outside the natal group, usually by a migration to the group of the other partner. Exogamy facilitates outbreeding. the opposite to exogamy is endogamy.
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Female exogamy has been established to have existed for 10's of thousands of years by examining
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mitochondrial DNA distributions.
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What is mitochondrial DNA?
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A short section of DNA found only in the mitochondria of cells and in humans only inherited from the mother.
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What is the Out of Africa hypothesis?
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The idea that the species Homo sapiens arose once in Africa and that members of this species migrated out of Africa about 150,000 years ago to eventually populate the globe.
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What is the multiregional model?
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A theory that proposes that Homo sapiens arouse in various parts of the world from pre-existing ancient stock that had already reached there (such as Homo erectus). The Out of Africa model is more widely accepted.
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Who is Mitochondrial Eve?
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The name given to the woman who is the most recent matrilineal common ancestor to all humans. The mitochondrial DNA in all humans can be traced back to her.
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How long ago was Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam alive?
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Eve - upwards of 200,000 years ago and Adam 60,000 years ago.
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What is allometry?
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The relationship between the size of an organism as measured by, for example, length, volume or body mass, and the size of a single feature such as brain size. The relationship can often be expressed by mathematical allometic functions or graphs showing allometric lines.
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What is an encephalization quotient?
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A relative measure of brain size that compares actual brain size with expected brain size for a species of a given body weight.
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