TheAssessment:
Type up your answers for the assessment below into a single document and submit via TurnItIn
1) Look at the four sources provided and rate them as trustworthy or untrustworthy. Write a one sentence justification of why.
a)https://tinyurl.com/y57lqk55
b)https://tinyurl.com/yxpb3e3y
c)https://tinyurl.com/y4h8mpev
d)https://tinyurl.com/y6cslmkc
2) Next,select ONEof the articles abstracts provided and write a click bait title for it. Keep it around 140 characters long, old school Twitter style – for example: Justin Timberlake has brought sexy back, learn how you can too! The goal isn’t to fully understand the science, but pull out one detailFROM THEIR FINDINGS(not the background information provided) and make it sensational sounding.
Please note which abstract you picked alone withgiving your clickbait title.
Abstract 1:
Article Title:Sex and schooling behaviour in the Trinidadian guppy
We tested the hypothesis that sexual asymmetry in mating costs affects choice of schooling partner in fish. Female guppies,Poecilia reticulata, from the Tacarigua River, Trinidad, associated preferentially with other (familiar) females from their natural wild school, while males did not show such a preference. This implies that wild guppy schools are not random assemblages of conspecifics. Females form the core of natural schools while males seem to trade off the potential advantages of schooling with familiar conspecifics against increased mobility in search of mating opportunities. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to cooperative behaviour, gene flow and population differentiation.
Griffiths, S.W. and Magurran, A.E., 1998. Sex and schooling behaviour in the Trinidadian guppy.Animal Behaviour,56(3), pp.689-693.
Abstract 2:
Article Title:Tail waving in a lizard (Bassiana duperreyi) functions to deflect attacks rather than as a pursuit-deterrent signal
Antipredator tactics that promote survival should be under strong selection. Therefore, apparently ‘risky’ behaviours should only be stably maintained in a population if they confer a fitness advantage. Here, we experimentally examined the adaptive function of tail waving, an apparently risky antipredator behaviour in hatchling Australian three-lined skinks,Bassiana duperreyi, by determining the effects of running speed, incubation temperature, sex and parental environment on the frequency of tail waving in laboratorytrials. We found that hatchling running performance predicted tail-waving behaviour independent of the other factors, where slow individuals tail-waved more frequently than fast individuals. These data support the hypothesis that tail waving functions to deflect predatory attacks towards the tail, an expendable body part in this and other lizard species. Moreover, we suggest that tail waving in this species occurs as a ‘last resort’ in response to fatigue. In addition, our results allow us to reject the hypothesis that tail waving primarily functions as a pursuit-deterrent signal in hatchlingB.duperreyi. Deflection is likely to have been the ancestral function of antipredator tail displays in lizards, with pursuit deterrence being a derived and less common function.
Telemeco, R.S., Baird, T.A. and Shine, R., 2011. Tail waving in a lizard (Bassiana duperreyi) functions to deflect attacks rather than as a pursuit-deterrent signal.Animal Behaviour,82(2), pp.369-375.
Abstract 3:
Article Title:Somatic sex identity is cell autonomous in the chicken
In the mammalian model of sex determination, embryos are considered to be sexually indifferent until the transient action of a sex-determining gene initiates gonadal differentiation. Although this model is thought to apply to all vertebrates, this has yet to be established. Here we have examined three lateral gynandromorph chickens (a rare, naturally occurring phenomenon in which one side of the animal appears male and the other female) to investigate the sex-determining mechanism in birds. These studies demonstrated that gynandromorph birds are genuine male:female chimaeras, and indicated that male and female avian somatic cells may have an inherent sex identity. To test this hypothesis, we transplanted presumptive mesoderm between embryos of reciprocal sexes to generate embryos containing male:female chimaeric gonads. In contrast to the outcome for mammalian mixed-sex chimaeras, in chicken mixed-sex chimaeras the donor cells were excluded from the functional structures of the host gonad. In an example where female tissue was transplanted into a male host, donor cells contributing to the developing testis retained a female identity and expressed a marker of female function. Our study demonstrates that avian somatic cells possess an inherent sex identity and that, in birds, sexual differentiation is substantively cell autonomous.
Zhao, D., McBride, D., Nandi, S., McQueen, H.A., McGrew, M.J., Hocking, P.M., Lewis, P.D., Sang, H.M. and Clinton, M., 2010. Somatic sex identity is cell autonomous in the chicken.Nature,464(7286), p.237.
Abstract 4:
Article Title:Sex change in coral-reef fish: Dependence ofstimulation and inhibition on relative size.
The removal of a single dominant individual has been shown to trigger a sex change in some coral-reef fish. In the saddleback wrasse(Thalassoma duperrey),however, female-to-male sex change requires visual stimulation from smaller conspecifics. This change is not dependent on the sex or color of the stimulus fish and can be inhibited by larger conspecifics. On the reef, a female probably changes sex when the relative numbers of larger and smaller conspecifics change within her home range.
Ross, R.M., Losey, G.S. and Diamond, M., 1983. Sex change in a coral-reef fish: dependence of stimulation and inhibition on relative size.Science,221(4610), pp.574-575.
Abstract 5:
Article Title:Postmating Mortality of Males in the Dasyurid Marsupials,DasyurusandParantechinus
Postmating death of all males is reported for the first time in field populations of two species of dasyurid marsupials,Parantechinus apicalisandDasyurus hallucatus. These results differ from field and laboratory studies on other populations of these species, and suggest that life history variation within and between species and genera of dasyurids is more pronounced than has been suspected.