Steven Crane Compiled Section Handouts. Human Behavioral Biology 2012

Founder populations evolve cooperation based on kin selection, and can then outcompete other groups they are re-integrated with.

Situation of ABB.

Parochial altruism is the phenomenon of cooperating with an in-group against an out-group, regardless of kinship. Like WWII.

What are some common patterns of human behavior across cultures and time?

1. 
   Males more violent than females
   
2. 
   Hierarchical systems
   
3. 
   Emphasis on kinship
   
4. 
   Polygamy (most cultures contain polygamy; most individuals within those cultures practice (serial) monogamy)
   

What are four criticisms of sociobiology?

1. 
   Sociobiology says behaviors are heritable.
   
   1. 
      Criticism: What is your proximate mechanism? Where's the gene? What protein does it code for? That's the real basis of evolution.
      
2. 
   Sociobiology says every social behavior is an adaptation.
   
   1. 
      Criticism: This is the adaptationist fallacy that everything is adaptive. You're making up just-so stories! What about spandrels?
      
3. 
   Sociobiology says that evolutionary change happens continuously in small incremental steps - gradualism.
   

Evolution, not revolution.

1. 
   Criticism: What about punctuated equilibrium? Fossil record shows periods of stasis and periods of rapid change. Tiny adaptations don't make a difference.
   
1. 
   And political criticisms. "Oh the conclusions you draw scientifically just happen to justify the hierarchies and inequities our society faces and which you (Southern, white scientists) benefit from."
   

Example Exam Questions

• Filling in prisoner’s dilemma payoffs

• Giving example of real-life prisoner’s dilemma situation

• Predicting traits (including imprinted genes) for tournament vs. pair bonding species

• How would a sociobiologist justify the existence of parent-offspring conflict over breastfeeding?

• Name a non-human primate in which female exogamy occurs and what this might have to do with war-like behavior.

We’ll be covering the two molecular genetics lectures this time. And the two behavioral genetics lectures next time. And then ethology and recognizing relatives after that. My sections won’t spend much time reviewing the introductory neuroscience, introductory neurology, and intro to sex lectures which will be done by the TAs next week.

Things to Know

1. 
   How sociobiologists think of the evolution of a trait, and how molecular biologists do so.
   
2. 
   Basics of DNA, RNA, protein sequence, structure and function.
   
3. 
   Classical mutations (point, deletion, insertion), how they are the engines of microevolutionary change and sociobiological ideas about gradualism.
   
4. 
   How microevolutionary change can relate to behavior.
   
5. 
   The basic idea of punctuated equilibrium, and the critiques of it.
   
6. 
   Why it is that a gene doesn’t decide when it activates and directs the construction of a protein, and the role of the environment in this process instead.
   
7. 
   The basic facts about exons, alternative splicing, promoters, transcriptional networks, transposons.
   
8. 
   The macroevolutionary consequences of changes in any of these realms.
   
9. 
   Molecular support for the idea of stasis.
   
10. 
    Challenges to the central dogma view of genetics and genetic determinism.
    

Review

1. 
   Proteins are made of amino acids. The sequence of amino acids determine the shape (and therefore the function) of the protein. Amino acids are coded for by DNA. DNA is a gigantically long molecule with four different bases, "letters." Three bases next to each other are called a codon. One codon is read to create one amino acid.
   
2. 
   Proteins serve tons of roles in the body; almost everything interesting is a protein (enzymes, neurotransmitters, transcription factors, receptors, other signals).
   

For our purposes, what is the central dogma of life?

1.