Use the following table to calculate how the composition of a fictional population of Homo habilis could have changed due to differences in social temperament and resulting success in cooperative foraging.
Natural Selection of cooperative abilities
Success rate in cooperative foraging due to the degree of social tolerance (%)
20
25
30
Trait variations
Now calculate the development of the respective population sizes over ten generations and enter the values (number of individuals per generation and trait variation) in the following diagram.
Trait and Variation of the trait
Consequences of the trait variations on reproductive success
Changes in the composition of the total population due to natural selection
0,9
1,1
1,3
Average number of offspring per individual
Population sizes of the Generation P2
(P1 * Offpsring)
30
30
30
Population sizes of the parent Generation (P1)
Population sizes of the Generation P3
(P2 * Offspring)
Hint for teachers:
Other features can be entered here, which are presumably adaptations to cooperative foraging and have been previously discussed in the classroom.
This worksheet can similarly be used for any other traits that are believed to have spread through natural selection in the populations of a species.
Trait variations: degree of social tolerance
low
medium
high
Use the following table to calculate how the composition of a fictional population of Homo habilis could have changed due to differences in social temperament and resulting success in cooperative foraging.
Natural Selection of cooperative abilities
Success rate in cooperative foraging due to the degree of social tolerance (%)
20
25
30
Trait variations
Trait variations: degree of social tolerance
Now calculate the development of the respective population sizes over ten generations and enter the values (number of individuals per generation and trait variation) in the following diagram.
Trait and Variation of the trait
Consequences of the trait variations on reproductive success
Changes in the composition of the total population due to natural selection
0,9
1,1
1,3
Average number of offspring per individual
Population sizes of the Generation P2
(P1 * Offpsring)
30
30
30
Population sizes of the parent Generation (P1)
Population sizes of the Generation P3
(P2 * Offspring)
Hint for teachers:
Other features can be entered here, which are presumably adaptations to cooperative foraging and have been previously discussed in the classroom.
This worksheet can similarly be used for any other traits that are believed to have spread through natural selection in the populations of a species.
low
medium
high
For further discussion questions / extensions, see also:
Author: Susan Hanisch
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This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Licence.
This material was developed in collaboration with the department of Comparative Cultural Psychology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the biology education working group of Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
https://www.eva.mpg.de/comparative-cultural-psychology/research-areas/education-innovation/ https://www.biodidaktik.uni-jena.de/