To better understand primate societies, we need to investigate the way primates find
mates and care for their offspring. This is known as their
a. social organization.
b. social system.
c. mating system.
d. reproductive strategy.
Intersexual selection
a. favors traits that enhance direct competition among individuals.
b. favors traits that are attractive to the opposite sex.
c. is a direct result of the environment.
d. produces variation in survival between the sexes.
Parent”offspring conflict occurs
a. because parents and offspring share all of their genes.
b. because individuals are more closely related to self than to siblings.
c. only when siblings are not full siblings.
d. only during weaning.
The so-called human revolution in culture is said to have occurred about
a. 200,000 years ago.
b. 60,000 years ago.
c. 4,000 years ago.
d. 1,000 years ago.
When monkeys recognize paternal kin, they may rely on
a. gender.
b. genotype.
c. age similarity.
d. phenotype.
Sexual selection
a. favors phenotypes that help survival.
b. produces the same characteristics in both sexes.
c. enhances offspring survival.
d. favors traits that increase the ability to compete for mates.
The FOXP2 gene
a. causes a heritable disease called PKU.
b. changed in humans because of directional selection.
c. is an example of environmental variation.
d. is expressed in the tongue.
Animals that reproduce at later ages have
a. smaller brain and body sizes.
b. longer gestation times.
c. shorter life spans and higher rates of mortality.
d. a menopausal stage.
Scientists have established that Oldowan flakes were
a. useful for a wide range of functions, including butchering animals.
b. primarily a waste product of making Oldowan tools.
c. primarily used for hunting large game like elephants.
d. accidental byproducts of using round cobbles for various purposes.
Which of the following is an example of blending inheritance?
a. A tall individual marries a short individual, and all of their offspring are intermediate
in height.
b. All of the domestic breeds of dogs that are alive today are descended from a wolf
ancestor.
c. Offspring from two unrelated species of cats have similar saber-toothed adaptations.
d. A red-headed individual marries an individual with black hair, and all of their
offspring have black hair.
There is evidence that monkeys and apes are able to
a. deceive one another.
b. create fictive kin categories.
c. make the connection between what others are looking at and what they are attending
to.
d. recognize themselves in a mirror.
Which the following statements is NOT true concerning human foraging groups?
a. Children are able to obtain enough food to feed themselves by the age of 10 years.
b. Women do not forage enough food to feed themselves until they are in their late 40s.
c. Men provide the majority of calories over time in all foraging groups.
d. Men frequently share the food they obtain with other group members.
Carbon-14 dating can be used to date
a. old volcanic rocks.
b. old sedimentary rocks.
c. young organic material.
d. young apatite crystals.
At least ________ of the genome is expressed as noncoding DNA.
a. 50%
b. 25%
c. 75%
d. 5%
Physical traits such as weight
a. are determined by genes more than by environment.
b. cannot be influenced by cultural practices.
c. can be influenced by genes, environment, and culture.
d. both a and b.
In the language of adaptive explanations, what is meant by the term “strategy”?
a. A mechanism that leads to particular behaviors in particular contexts
b. A conscious decision to make adaptive behavioral choices
c. A conscious decision to make adaptive or nonadaptive behavioral choices
d. A behavior of higher animals, such as mammals
Modern ________ were most likely derived from the propliopithecids.
a. lemurs
b. Old World monkeys
c. tarsiers
d. New World monkeys
According to your text, humans owe much of their success to all the following
EXCEPT
a. culture.
b. intelligence.
c. individuality.
d. cooperation.
Studies of Neanderthal postcrania indicate that Neanderthals
a. were very robust and heavily muscled.
b. used technology instead of their bodies to deal with the environment.
c. were adapted for interglacial periods.
d. did not have a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.
The logic of evolutionary psychology begins with the precept that
a. people are adapted to modern ways of life.
b. complex adaptations evolve quickly.
c. natural selection creates psychologies in animals in such a way as to solve specific
adaptive problems.
d. humans evolved in stratified societies and high population density.
Because there are 64 possible codons and only 20 amino acids,
a. many mutations have no effect on phenotype.
b. every mutation has some effect on phenotype.
c. each tRNA molecule contains two extra amino acids.
d. each tRNA molecule contains two extra codons.
Low rates of mutation can maintain variation in a population because many different
genotypes generate intermediate phenotypes that are favored by ________ selection.
a. stabilizing
b. disruptive
c. directional
d. All of the above.
Oldowan tools are quite variable in size and shape. The best explanation for this pattern
is thought to be
a. the function the tools were made for.
b. the particular method used to make them.
c. how toolmakers thought their tools should look.
d. The particular raw material used to make the tools.
Which of the following is usually more common among kin than among nonkin in
primate groups?
a. Aggression
b. Foraging
c. Alarm calling
d. Coalition formation
Which of these is the most widely supported explanation for the small body size and
mixture of primitive and derived traits of Homo floresiensis?
a. H. floresiensis is a result of evolutionary dwarfism.
b. H. floresiensis had microcephaly.
c. H. floresiensis had an ancestor older than Homo erectus.
d. H. floresiensis is a hoax.
After a drought, a scientist collects dead birds and finds that most of the individuals that
did not survive to adulthood have either small or large beaks. Given this pattern, how
would you expect selection to act on the population?
a. Selection will not change the mean beak size.
b. Selection will make the mean beak size in the population smaller.
c. Selection will make the mean beak size in the population larger.
d. The entire population will die out.
The fossil specimen known as “Lucy”
a. is a 3.2-million-year-old australopithecine.
b. is a complete skeleton.
c. was not bipedal.
d. was named after the Peanuts character.
The first Neanderthal findings were thought to be
a. diseased modern humans.
b. an extinct prehuman animal.
c. an undiscovered living race of people.
d. evidence of H. erectus in Europe.
Evolutionary theory predicts that human females should choose males who
a. can provide the most resources.
b. are younger than they are.
c. have had many sexual partners.
d. are not symmetrical.
In order for the medium ground finch to evolve into the large ground finch over a
46-year period, what environmental scenario would have to occur?
a. No selective pressure from the environment
b. Constant selective pressure from the environment
c. An isolated fit of extreme selective pressure from the environment followed by no
selective pressure at all
d. Constantly changing selective pressure from the environment
Analysis of DNA sequences tells us that
a. humans and chimpanzees share a more recent common ancestor than either shares
with gorillas.
b. the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans were gorillas.
c. humans left Asia about 1 million years ago.
d. humans left Asia and went to Africa.
A complex adaptation like the human eye exists in its present form because
a. past organisms evolved and utilized a transitional form of the modern eye.
b. extreme forms of variation allowed it to evolve in a single jump.
c. it was created by a chance mutation.
d. many organisms have eyes.
Discuss two major causes of genetic variation among human groups.
Did early hominins live in home bases? Explain your answer.
What adaptations do some plants have to make themselves less palatable to animals that
might otherwise eat them? Explain the primate counteradaptations that allow them to
eat such plants.
What do game theory scenarios illustrate about the nature of human cooperation?
Include in your answer a discussion of the dictator game and the ultimatum game.
Explain the difference between homologous and analogous characters. Which of these
should be used in phylogenetic analysis?
How does the archaeological evidence support the hypothesis that modern humans
arose in Africa?
Why is evolutionary theory relevant to behavior even though behavior is sensitive to
environmental conditions?
How does a sequence of DNA produce a protein through transcription and translation?
Discuss the differences between Mode 1, 2, and 3 stone tool technologies.
Compare and contrast five differences in morphology and behavior between the
strepsirrhine primates and the haplorrhine primates. Make a distinction between
ancestral and derived traits in your discussion.
How do genetic distance measures work? How have genetic distance measurements
been applied to the primate fossil record to reveal information about the divergence of
primate groups?
Compare the sexual division of labor in hunting in contemporary foragers. What are the
reasons for such a division of labor?
Under what circumstances is selection NOT directional? Illustrate your answer with at
least one example. Use your answer to explain why scientists must understand
stabilizing selection in order to accurately describe evolutionary processes.
Discuss the better documented counterstrategies to infanticide evolved by female
primates, and give specific primate examples from the reading.
Compare and contrast the three families of Fayum haplorrhines (oligopithecids,
parapithecids, propliopithecids). What characteristics did they share with living groups
of primates?