PSYC 3100 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Human Behavioral Ecology, David Lack, Heritability

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 3100
• Professor: Don Dedrick

Document Summary

Recurrent problems in the environment of evolutionary adaptedness (eea) lead to a mind adapted to solve those problems. Adaptationism (psychological traits are solutions to environmental problems) Supposition that humans and other animals behave in ways that maximize their reproductive fitness over their lifetimes. This is the assumption that human behavior is often optimal and that natural selection will favor optimizers. Optimality is realized in human and other animals. Theoretical modelling with the assumption of optimality, one can formulate hypotheses and collect data. Optimality is a relative thing because there are always tradeoffs due to the environment/ecology. Clutch size = number of eggs laid per nest. Clutch size is a heritable trait acted on by natural selection over many generations. Constant in some generations but plastic in others. Variation occurs because of the tradeoffs between cost and benefits of producing larger clutches, so an optimal clutch size should be one that produces the maximum number of young surviving to reproduction.