Please answer questions, label 1A 1B (number and letter), also include citations and references. check plagiarism thanks! Answers does not have to be long
1. A) Describe what Sexual Selection is and B) explain how it differs from Natural Selection
2. Research a behavior in an animal and A) explain the ultimate causes of that behavior and B) list the proximate causes of it.
3. “The southern gastric brooding frog was discovered in 1972 and properly described in 1981. Intense interest followed and in the same year it had disappeared in the wild, shortly followed by the last captive specimen’s death in 1983. The interest was primarily due to the frog’s unusual reproductive method. The female swallows her eggs and turns her stomach into a womb, vomiting up her young when they are grown. The loss of her stomach means she doesn’t eat while they develop, and her new womb bloats so much it causes her lungs to collapse (meaning she has to breathe through her skin). On the other hand another species of frog, the Túngara frog, lay their eggs in a pond and leaves them to develop on their own without any parental care” (www.facebook.com/evolutionarybiology – like). A) Compare the gastric brooding frog and the Túngara in terms of how they balance the trade-off of quality vs. quantity of offspring (are they each K-selected or r-selected?). B) What other life-history traits (include: life span, number of offspring produced, age at reproduction, reproductive events per lifetime) do you expect to find differences between gastric brooding frog or the Túngara frog? Explain.
4. A) Explain why one can argue that humans were r-selected species before the industrial revolution and now in modern times see to be K-selected (in your explanation include the terms: carrying capacity, rate of population growth). B) In most countries, the number of offspring produced per couple is decreasing every year, the age of first time mothers in increasing (they are older when they have their first baby) and the cost of investment per offspring is increasing (for example college tuition!). Explain what effect would that have in the model of population growth in those countries (do you expect them to be more K-selected or r-selected?) Make sure to support your argument. C) Can human population increase forever? (use the terms: carrying capacity, population growth, density-dependent and density-independent factors).
5. PICTURE ATTACHED Study the figure below (published in Kwano et al. 2002). The x-axis of the figure shows different locations at different altitudes, with altitude decreasing from left to right (W. Java has the highest altitude, W. Mindanao has the lowest). The y-axis represents the range of body length for beetles found at each location. Two species of closely related rhinoceros beetles inhabit Southeast Asia: Chalcosoma caucasus and Chalcosoma atlas. One species, C. atlas (white boxes in the figure), is more common in low altitude, while C. caucasus (filled boxes in the figure) is more common in higher altitudes. However, they overlap at intermediate altitude (from Lampung to E. Thailand). The graph shows the body length of each species in allopatric and sympatric locations. What ecological phenomenon can explain the differences between the allopatric (when only one species lives in that location) and sympatric (when both species live in the same location) populations? Please explain your argument, you MUST include the terms: competition, competitive exclusion, realized niche, fundamental niche, resource-partitioning & character displacement).
6. The use of pesticides in agriculture leads to the unexpected increase in the number of pest, this has been termed “The Pesticide Paradox”. The reason for such paradox is that pesticides disrupt natural predator-prey interactions. A) Explain the natural changes in the population of prey and predator of a pest population (example: plant-eating mites and mite-eating mites). B) Explain two (2) possible effects of pesticides on the natural predator-prey population dynamics. C) Suggest an alternative method of pest control that does not result in the inconvenient increase of pest populations.
