TEST BANK-EVOLUTIONARY CHAPTER SUMMARY CONTAINING QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

TEST BANK-EVOLUTIONARY CHAPTER SUMMARY CONTAINING QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Exam (elaborations) TEST BANK-EVOLUTIONARY CHAPTER SUMMARY CONTAINING QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS TEST BANK-EVOLUTIONARY CHAPTER SUMMARY CONTAINING QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS CHAPTER 1: THE SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENTS LEADING TO EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY Chapter Summary Evolution—change over time in organisms—was suspected to occur long before Darwin came on the scene. Missing before him however, was a theory about a causal process that explained how organic change could occur. His theory of natural selection was Darwin’s crowning contribution to evolutionary biology. It has three essential ingredients: variation, inheritance, and selection. Natural selection occurs when some inherited variations lead to greater reproductive success than other inherited variations. In short, natural selection is defined as changes over time due to the differential reproductive success of inherited variations. Natural selection provided a unifying theory for the biological sciences, and solved several important mysteries. First, it provided a causal process by which change, the modification of organic structures, takes place over time. Second, it proposed a theory to account for the origin of new species. Third, it united all living forms into one grand tree of descent, and simultaneously revealed the place of humans in the grand scheme of life. In addition to natural selection, Darwin devised a second evolutionary theory: the theory of sexual selection. Sexual selection deals with the evolution of characteristics due to the success in mating rather than success in survival. Sexual selection operates through two processes: intrasexual competition and intersexual selection. In intrasexual competition, victors in same-sex contests are more likely to reproduce owing to increased sexual access to mates. In intersexual selection, individuals with qualities that are preferred by the opposite sex are more likely to reproduce. Both processes of sexual selection result in evolution. A major stumbling block for many biologists was that fact that Darwin lacked a workable theory of inheritance. This theory was provided when the work of Gregor Mendel was recognized and synthesized with Darwin’s theory of natural selection in a movement called the Modern Synthesis. According to this theory, inheritance does not involve blending of the two parents, but rather is particulate. Genes—the fundamental unit of inheritance—come in discrete packets that are not blended, but rather are passed on intact from parent to child. The particulate theory of inheritance provided the missing ingredient to Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Following the Modern Synthesis, two European biologists, Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen, started a new movement called ethology, which sought to place animal behavior within an evolutionary context by focusing on both the origins and functions of behavior. In 1964, the theory of natural selection itself was reformulated in a revolutionary pair of articles published by William D. Hamilton. The process by which selection operates, according to Hamilton, involves not just classical fitness (the direct production of offspring), but inclusive fitness, which includes the effects of an individual’s actions on the reproductive success of genetic relatives, weighted by the appropriate degree of genetic relatedness. The inclusive fitness reformulation provided a more precise theory of the process of natural selection by promoting a “gene’s eye” view of evolutionary selection pressures. In 1966, George Williams published the now classic Adaptation and Natural Selection. This book had three effects. First, it led to the downfall of group selection. Second, it promoted the Hamiltonian revolution. And third, it provided rigorous criteria for identifying adaptations. In the 1970s, Robert Trivers built upon the work of Hamilton and Williams, offering three seminal theories that remain important today: reciprocal In 1975, Edward O. Wilson published Sociobiology: A New Synthesis, which attempted to synthesize all of the key developments in evolutionary biology. Wilson’s book created a storm of controversy, mostly because of its final chapter, which focused on humans, offering a series of hypotheses but little empirical data. Much of the resistance to Wilson’s book, as well as to using evolutionary theory to explain human behavior, may be traced to several core misunderstandings. Contrary to these misunderstandings, evolutionary theory does not imply that human behavior is genetically determined, nor that human behavior is unchangeable. It does not imply improbable feats of computation, such as calculating fractions of genetic relatedness. And it d...

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