E-mail Instructor

U of A Web Site

Dept. of Psychology

For the first exam students will be presented with four or five questions and be required to answer two of them. Answers are essay format.

Here are a couple examples of the sorts of questions that I might ask on the first exam.

1. Generally speaking, a species' behaviour, rather than its physical structure, will respond more rapidly to environmental change (i.e., ecological pressures). Consequently, social drift (the summed effect of tradition drift and genetic drift) is quite significant in the evolution of new behaviour patterns and, ultimately, speciation (i.e., the evolution of new species). Some of the environmental/ecological pressures that play a significant role in shaping a species' behavioural evolution include the following: defense against predators, flocking/herding/schooling, temporal issues, competitive ability, feeding efficiency, movement into new adaptive zones/niches, reproductive efficiency, survival of offspring, and population stability. Pick any four of these ecological pressures and relate them to the issue of social drift leading to speciation.

2. In class we discussed how different species of Galogos ("bush babies") communicate in different ways. This is, in part, dependent upon environmental constraints (e.g., whether they live high or low in the forest canopy) and the reason an individual is communicating (e.g., lost infant, detection of a predator, etc.). Discuss the importance of communication in organizing, mediating, and influencing social behaviours both within and between species (note: you are not limited to discussing galogos).