Answers to Evolution Study Questions

(As revised end W11 & W13)

Some of the following are far from easy. But working them out will help you understand the material
well..

The first two questions are kind of review from last time, but they are relevant to the current material:

1. If one of your parents has a rare gene for, say, propensity toward getting green moldy teeth, what are the
odds that you will get it?
a. nil
b. 25%
c. 50%
d. 100%
The answer is c. It was mostly explained last time. However, you must keep in mind that if the gene was
rare it would be EXTREMELY unlikely that it would be homozygous in the parent that had it.

2. If one of your siblings has a rare gene for, say, propensity toward getting green moldy teeth, what are the
odds that you have it?
a. nil
b. 25%
c. 50%
d. 100%
The answer is c. It was explained last time. But the relevance in this case is that the genetic similarity of
parent and offspring is the same as that of two siblings.

3. Given a choice between raising one of your own children and raising your baby brother since your
parents have died, what will be best for your "reproductive success?"
a. it doesn’t matter
b. raise your baby brother
c. raise your own child
The correct answer is a. Because of the answers to 1 and 2.

4. In species where only a few males inseminate most of the females, there are typically _____ males as
there are females.
a. many more
b. many less
c. somewhat more
d. somewhat less
e. as many
The correct answer is e. One of the answers to the next question is the reason.

5. In species where only a few males inseminate most of the females,

a. there is little use for a large number of males, so genes that favor having males become less common and
the proportion of males in the population goes down
b. if there are equal numbers of males and females, then the reproductive success of the males who do the
inseminating is very high, but the average reproductive success of males and females is the same.
c. if there are equal numbers of males and females, then the average reproductive success of males is lower
than that of females
d. if there are equal numbers of males and females, then the average reproductive success of males is
greater than that of females
e. if the average reproductive success of males is lower than that of females, genes favoring having males
will increase in the population.
The correct answer is b. The key here is the AVERAGE reproductive success. Each male has just as many
offspring as ALL the females. Therefore the gene that determines male-ness is just as successful as that
which determines female-ness and hence is just as common in the gene pool (Dawkins spends some time
explaining this).
6. Suppose that one were to alter the point system for the Hawk-Dove “competition” to add a cost for
Hawk-Hawk fights:

Food = +50
Dove-Dove encounter= -10
Losing a Hawk-Hawk encounter: -100
Winning a Hawk-Hawk encounter: -30 (plus 50 for the food obtained).

The average winnings for a Hawk if almost everyone is a Hawk will be

a. -80
b. -40
c. 0
d. 40
e. 50
The correct answer is b. When a hawk has a contest, it will almost always be with another hawk. It will
have equal chances of winning or losing. Therefore its expected winnings are
(1/2)(50-30) + (1/2)(-100)=-40

7. If most of the individuals in a population are hawks and a not many are doves how will the proportion of
doves change over time?
a. Increase up to a point and then stop
b. Increase until almost everyone is a dove
c. Decrease up to a point and then stop
d. Decrease until almost nobody is a dove
e. No change.
The correct answer is a. Doves will usually compete with hawks and lose but they won’t get injured.
Hawks will also usually compete with hawks and they will have even odds of getting seriously injured.
Thus Hawks are going to do less well than Doves, who will live to compete another day. So doves have
higher reproductive success and will increase their proportion in the population. But if this proportion
gets too high, the situation reverses (see next question).

8. If most of the individuals in a population are doves and a not many are hawks how will the proportion of
doves change over time?
a. Increase up to a point and then stop
b. Increase until almost everyone is a dove
c. Decrease up to a point and then stop
d. Decrease until almost nobody is a dove
e. No change.
The correct answer is c. If almost everyone is a dove, doves will usually compete with doves and have even
chances of getting food (and will suffer some costs due to the protracted nature of the intereaction). Hawks
will usually meet doves, and always win. So Hawks do better than doves—until there are too high a
proportion of hawks (see above).

9. Suppose 1% of the alleles at a chromosomal locus which affects social behavior are a version of a
dominant gene that makes its holders altruistic in some way (i.e. the gene confers altruism even if present
only one of the an individudal’s chromosomes). Then what percentage of the offspring of a random
mating will carry the gene (approximately)?
a. 1%
b. 0.5%
c. 2%
d. 4%
The correct answer is c. If 1% of the chromosomes have the rare allele, then about 2% of individuals will
have it, because each has two chromosmes each of whic has a 1% chance of having it. When a pair mates,
the chances are about 4% that one of the two parents will have the allele (most likely on only one of the two
chromosomes that house this gene). A sex cell from that individual will have a 50% chance of having the
allele. Therefore about 50% of 4% of offspring (i.e. 2%) will have the allele. Refer to the second Sgook
slide if you need further help.

I think you might find the remainder pretty tough; but they will be good for you!

10. Remember the Sgooks: Sgooks have litters of 8 offspring. Six of each litter normal gets picked off by
the single attack of a predator that waits until they are “just right” for eating. However there is a new, rare
gene (H) for Heroism. If one of the offspring has a copy of H, it throws itself at the predator when it
attacks and thereby saves the rest of the litter, though it, itself, gets eaten up. We calculated that if 1% of
the individuals in the population had H in one generation, then about 3% would in the next generation.
Thus the gene would increase in frequency over generations. Suppose that litters were of size 4 and that
the predator typically took 3 of the litter out. Would the proportion of H still increase over generations?
a. It would increase
b. It would decrease
c. It would hold constant.
The correct answer is a. If litters are of size 4 and the predator gobbles 3 individuals when there is no hero
in the litter, then in litters where there is no hero, there will be one non-hero per litter after the attack and
in litters where there is a hero there will be on average 1 hero and 2 non-heroes left after the attack. If 1%
of the population had the hero gene at the time of mating, then 2% of the mating pairs would have a
member with the gene and so 2% of the litters would have offspring with the gene while 98% would not.
Therefore, out of 100 litters there woul,d after the attack, be (2)(1)=2 heroic offspring left and (2)(2)+(98)
(1)=4+98=102 non-heroic offspring left. Thus the percentage of heroic offspring after the attack would
be 100 x 2/(2+102)= 200/104 or about 2%. Since we started with 1%, this is a doubling of the proportion
of heroes in the population.

11. The following applies to this and the next question: Suppose that during fights over scarce resources
large individual are just slightly more likely to win over smaller ones and that losers of encounters always
get very, very seriously injured. Suppose moreover that there are two genetically determined personality
types in the population: “Sensible” individuals who choose to fight with individuals smaller than
themselves and run away from individuals larger than themselves, and “Paradoxical” individuals who
choose to fight with individuals larger than themselves and run away from individuals smaller than
themselves.

If most of the individuals in the population are paradoxical, how will the proportion of sensibles change
over time?
a. Increase up to a point and then stop
b. Increase until almost everyone is a sensible
c. Decrease up to a point and then stop
d. Decrease until almost nobody is a sensible
e. No change.

The correct answer is d. A paradoxical will usually encounter another paradoxical, and the larger will
run. Occasionally it will encouter a large sensible and a big fight will ensue. This may have disasterous
consequences for the paradoxical, but this won’t happen very often because there are not many sensibles
around. Thus paradoxicals rarely get clobbered when they interact.
A sensible will usually encounter a paradoxical and if the paradoxical is smaller, a fight will ensue which
the sensible will sometimes lose, with disasterous consequences. Thus sensibles will with less than even
odds but nevertheless pretty often get badly injured when it faces a random competition. Hence the
already rare sensibles will decrease still further relative to paradoxcals.

Another way to approach this is by brute force, as we did in class with the Hawks and Doves:
 very
likely par whichever is larger runs little gain or loss

par
very 1/2 sens smaller both run little gain or loss
unlikely a bit less
sens than even
1/2 odds par wins pos points
sens larger
par loses huge neg points
a bit more
than even
odds
a bit more
than even
odds sens wins pos points
par smaller
1/2 sens loses huge neg points
a bit less
par than even
very odds
likely
1/2 both run little gain or loss
par larger

sens
very
unlikely sens whichever is smaller runs little gain or loss

12. If most of the individuals in the population are sensible, how will the proportion of sensibles change
over time?
a. Increase up to a point and then stop
b. Increase until almost everyone is a sensible
c. Decrease up to a point and then stop
d. Decrease until almost nobody is a sensible
e. No change.
The correct answer is b. Same logic as above. In both 11 and 12 note the contrast between the correct
answers here and in questions 7 and 8 above. In one case the contingencies are such that there is an
equilibrium to which things arrive no matter where one starts whereas in the other what happens in the end
depends on how things start. The former sort of situation is much more common, but natural selection can
do weird stuff sometimes.

13. This is a VERY hard but rather interesting question. I would definitely never ask anything this
difficult on an exam. In the evolution of Heros in the Skooks, we considered the case where the
proportion of the H allele was initially quite low (0.5%); in that case we found that the Skook gene (i.e.
allele) increases in frequency in the next generation. However, an interesting question that a student raised
is, this: "How common does the allele eventually become?"
a. It becomes very common (near 100%)
b. It increases a little for a few generations but eventually becomes almost entirely extinct
c. Somewhere in between (like maybe 40-80% but nothing like, say 99%))
The correct answer is c. The key to this is that whereas the trait is good for family groups as a whole, it is
bad for the individual who has it, and it helps the group almost as much if the gene is fairly common as if it
is extremely common. If the gene is fairly common (e.g. 70%) , then almost every mating will have a
parent who has at least one copy of the H allele and therefore almost every litter that is born will have
some individuals who have it. Once the allele is that common, a predator will almost never get more than
one member of a family. Since almost every litter has some altruists, the gene will increase very little
further in frequency due to its causing differential reproductive success. On the other hand whichever
altruist is the one to squawk gets clobbered, and there is at least a 1/8 chance of that happening even if
everyone is a Hero. So having the gene is something of a personal risk with regard to one's reproductive
success. As a result the allele will get common but not universal.