Problem
Here is a YouTube video "North Shore Audubon Presents Shai Mitra: FInding, Identifying and Appreciating Sparrows" to watch before completing this problem
Choose a focal species. This can be any wild, non-domesticated animal, plant, fungus, or Protistan species (i.e., any Eukaryote). If you are using a focal species for an assignment in another class, you may use it here as well, but be sure that it is a species, not a group of species. Identify your focal species:
1. Scientific name (Genus species):
2. Common Name (if any):
3. Family:
4. Order:
5. Class:
6. Phylum/Division:
7. Kingdom
8-20. Your evolutionary question is the question you thought of after watching the Sparrow Identification video. If you did not write out your question and email it to me earlier, that's ok, you may do it now. Construct an evolutionary question:
21-25. Does your species reproduce sexually or asexually?
26-30. If sexual, does your species have separate sexes (each individual acts as a male or a female at a given stage in its life = dioecious) or is it hermaphroditic (each individual can act as both male and female monoecious):
31-35. If dioecious, do males and females of your species differ in any visible ways apart from their gonads and gametes? Briefly describe up to three sexually dimorphic traits, or state that there are none if there are none. Briefly compare/contrast your species' life history strategy with that of humans in each of the following respects:
36-40. Age at first reproduction
41-45. Number of reproductive efforts per lifetime
46-50. Number of offspring per effort
51-55. Lifespan
56-100. Briefly describe how you would design a study that would use your focal species to investigate your evolutionary question. Note: if your question was originally framed with respect to a particular species, and you used a different focal species above, simply apply the gist of your question to your focal species, as best you can. Your answer should be concise but with specific details: would it be done in the lab or in the field? What variables would you measure? What sort of sample sizes would you try to get? How would different kinds of results (data) influence how you might answer your question?