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Forum MODULE 1 2017 ‐ 2018 What’s distinctive about the hierarchical levels of biological organization concept? That every level is contains those located down in the hierarchy and is contained by those located up in the hierarchy. This embeddedness is a critical property of the biological hierarchy of levels of organization concept. Indicate one major signature to distinguish a reductionist versus organicist approach? Reductionism is mainly concerned with identifying upward (or bottom‐up) causal relations, whereas organicism emphasizes that causal relations across levels are dialectical or bi‐ directional, or two‐way, that is, they involve downward (or top‐down) causal relations. Why is provincial biology called provincial and autonomous biology autonomous? Because provincial biologists see biology as an “immature” province within physics. They would like to “evolve”, improve, become integrated, and explain biological processes along the same sort of formalized laws that are used in physics. What is the key notion that distinguishes proximate from ultimate causes? The boundary within versus between generations. Proximate causes operate within an individual’s entire life time, whereas ultimate causes operate across generations (transgenerationally). What is the difference between vertical versus horizontal causal relations? Where the independent (cause) and dependent (effect) variables are located: same level (horizontal), different level (vertical). What kind of causal relation is typically reductionist? Those with arrows that point upward, that is, when the “cause” variable is located in a lower level than the “effect” variable. What kind of reductionism is rejected by autonomous biology? Two: the explanatory and the theory reductionisms. Indicate in what level of the biological hierarchy you would locate the following variables: Anger: organismic Body size: organismic Brain size: infra‐organismic Self‐aggression: organismic Bullying: supraorganismic (social) Testosterone: infra‐organismic Anxiety; organismic Mating system: supraorganismic (social) Sperm motility: infra‐organismic
How would you define the optimality principle and what is it meant to account for? Natural selection favours organismal designs (structures) that maximize biological fitness (survival and reproduction) Are living being optimally designed? Why? In absolute terms they are NOT, for a number of reasons, including trade‐offs, co‐evolution, and the fact that the environment typically changes more rapidly than the organism’s biological make‐up. HOWEVER, the optimality principle is still correct and useful in claiming that although we living organisms are suboptimal designed (because we are made of suboptimal components), we are the best (the optimal) solution of all possible suboptimal solutions. In other words, we tend to be the best (optimal) design given the circumstances. What’s a tradeoff? Give an example of a tradeoff you have experienced in your life A compromise when the organism faces a sort of intra‐individual dilemma. Ideally it would maximize energy or time allocated to grow or maintain or perform several organs, functions, or activities, but in practice that is not possible because they are incompatible, antagonistic, that is, any energy or time spent on one organ/activity is actually taken away from energy or time spent on other organs/activities. This is so because energy or time budgets are limited, you can’t maximize everything at the same time. If you are generous and favors A, you will automatically be stingy and disfavours B! Why decisions concerning maximizing mating success are said to be incompatible with decisions aimed at maximizing parenting success? Because there is tradeoff between mating and parenting. They can’t be time‐shared (or energy‐shared) What’s the key difference between a decision based on a tradeoff and one based on a scenario of coevolution? Would you say that both may shape an individual’s decisions? The former is an intra‐individual decision/issue, the latter is an inter‐individual decision/issue. In the former you decide what to privilege out of a number of antagonistic options that you would like to maximize, whereas in the latter you are playing with others who also want to maximize their own interests and you must make decisions that balance what you get (benefits) and what you lose (costs). And yes they both influence an individual’s decisions and eventually his or her biological fitness. Slide 14 (theme 1b) shows two male phenotypes of beetles. One is horned, big, and possesses small‐sized both eyes and genitals. The other is hornless, lighter, and possesses larger‐sized both eyes and genitals. Use the two principles (tradeoff and coevolution) to account for the evolution of these two male morphs. If you favour your body size and horn growth you will end up being worse off in terms of sight (small eyes) and sperm production (genitalia size). And yes, you will be able to monopolize a territory and fight off other male rivals; however, if your rivals “specialize” in growing their eyes and testes, they will not be able to defeat you in a combat for females, but they will
Two, that organisms are shaped by their environment and the latter is constructed by the organisms via their active interaction with them (so, organisms interact, engage in a two‐way traffic with their environments) in each generation, and that organisms inherit their parents’ genes and niches/environments, across generations. In the new (non‐conventional) paradigm of inclusive (genetic plus non‐genetic) inheritance there are two parameters that need to be considered to categorize the different modes of inheritance. Indicate which. Whether you receive information from your kin (relatives) versus non‐kin (unrelated individuals) and whether the information is transmitted within (horizontally) generations or across generations (obliquely and vertically) What are the key distinguishing characteristics of epigenetic inheritance versus parental effects? Epigenetic inheritance is information that can be transmitted only vertically and involves inheriting your parents’ epigenetic marks already present in their gametes’ DNA, whereas parental effects are anything your parent does that shapes your phenotype, e.g. what they eat, the stress they experience, the parenting style they use to rear you, etc. Parental effect, which are also only vertically transmitted, can start from very instant the zygote is formed. People choose mating partners that are resourceful because it may increase their biological fitness. Which why is involved? Third why When people are angry, they tend to react more aggressively. Which why is involved here? First why People who developed an insecure‐type of attachment when they were infants tend to establish conflicting romantic relationships when they reach adulthood. Which why is involved here? Second why Play is practiced by human individuals (and also by many other warm‐blooded species) because it helped our ancestors and our lineage’s ancestors to maximize their fitness. Which why is involved here? Fourth why Single‐out a characteristic that distinguishes predetermined from probabilistic epigenesis. The direction of arrows! In predetermined epigenesist, your brain architecture is largely determined by your genes and your behaviour and psychology are determined by your brain architecture (the environment plays just a passive role). In probabilistic epigenesist, the information flows in both directions, nothing is (pre)determined, every agent (genes, brains, behaviours/environments) are engaged in a dialectic or bidirectional relation with one
another. The outcome is rather difficult to predict or anticipate, because of the complexities of the potential interactions between all the agents. Name the set of characteristics that distinguish narrow‐minded from broad‐minded psychobiology You can look up this in the table provided. Indicate the defining characteristics of physiological psychology, psychophysiology, and neuropsychology. The three of them are rather interested in studying brain (physiology)‐behaviour relations. Physiological psychology tends to use animal models of humans, and experimental designs that allow for the identification of causal relations. Its work tends to be anthropocentric, focused on proximate causes, and typically based on a narrow minded view of psychobiology. For example, physiology causes behaviour (bottom‐up or upward causal relations), which is reductionist. Psychophyusiology and neuropsychology work on human subjects. The former with normal human subjects, focusing on the correlation between brain activity and psychological function (correlational studies), and the latter compares normal subjects with subjects that have some damaged brain area. What are the major contributions that the broad‐minded view of psychobiology can make to psychology? Two: integrating processes that operate at different levels of the biological hierarchy and integrating proximate and ultimate causes. Why is the internal validity higher in experimental than observational studies, and conversely, why is ecological validity higher in observational than experimental studies? It is just a matter of how much control of context, subjects, and variables you are able to incorporate. Control is positively associated with repeatability, replicability and more typically negatively related to the naturalness (ecological validity) of the system that you are studying. Too much control is often associated with distorting, making too artificial, the system you want to understand. And, you are supposed to be interested in understanding how nature works! Why observational studies cannot be used to test causal hypothesis? Because they don’t control the multiple confounding variables that can impact the system you are studying. In observational studies you just study patterns of co‐variation between the study variables. In Harlow’s experimental studies, what is the independent variable and what the dependent variable? This you already know: maternal deprivation is the cause (independent variable) and the behaviour and the poor psychological function of deprived infants is the effect (dependent variable).
