ant1 study guide

8/10/2019 ANT1 Study Guide

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Anthropology 1 Final Exam Battery

Tese 24 questions comprise the set of questions from which your actual nal examquestions will be drawn. Only 8 (eight) questions will appear on the actual exam, but

those 8 could by any of the 24 in this battery.You will not receive a key to this battery. You have to prepare on you own.

1. According to Darwin's theory, what three conditions are necessary for natural selectionto produce adaptations?

2. Provide and explain two pieces of evidence which suggest that Homo ergasterhuntedand ate meat.

3. Human skin color varies strongly with latitude. Peoples from high latitudes are ofenquite pale, while peoples from low latitudes are ofen very dark. Explain (a) why pale skinis favored by natural selection at high latitude, and (b) why dark skin is favored at lowlatitude.

4. Te drawings below depict the legs of two different primate species. (a) Indicate whichone of these species is bipedal and (b) label twoanatomical characteristics which allowyou to make this diagnosis. (Precise anatomical terms are not needed. Commondescriptive English phrases are sufficient.)

TAs name ______BATTERY_______ Your Name _______BOOM________


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5. Identify the species of hominin pictured below. Ten identify two features that allowyou to make your identication.

6. Te following pictures represent two different modes of hominin tools. For each (a) and(b), name the tool mode and state the name of the hominin species rst thought to havemanufactured tools of that mode.

(a) (b)

7. In human societies that practice polyandry, it is very common for co-husbands to bebrothers, rather than to be unrelated men. Use Hamiltons rule to explain this fact. Be sureto state and explain Hamiltons rule, rst.



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8. In the 1989 movie, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Rick Moranis inadvertently shrinks hischildren to the size of an antabout 100th of their original size. Explain (a) why thesekids would have had a very hard time staying warm, and (b) what this has to do with themorphology of the Neandertals.

9. Today there are more than a million Afrikaans-speaking people living in South Africa.Modern Afrikaners are descended from a small number of Dutch immigrants who arrivedin Africa in the the 17th century. Tere are a number of genetic diseases that occur atmuch higher frequency among Afrikaners than among contemporary Dutch populations.Explain how these diseases became common among the Afrikaners.

10. Te oldest anthropoid (monkey-like) primate fossils found at the Fayum depression inEgypt date to the late Eocene. Explain why it is quite likely that the rst anthropoidprimates actually appeared during the Paleocene.

11. Infanticide is frequently observed in some species that form one-male groups, such aslangurs and howling monkeys. Tere is consensus among biologists that infanticide is anadaptive strategy that enhances male reproductive success. Explain both (a) howinfanticide increases male reproductive success, and (b) why it mainly occurs in one-malegroups.

12. In the early part of the 19th century members of two Anabaptist religious groups, theHutterites and the Old Order Amish, immigrated to the United States from centralEurope. All contemporary Hutterites are descended from 443 people, while the foundingpopulation of the Old Order Amish are descended from 200 people. Since that time bothgroups have been almost closed to immigration. Recently, researchers have collectedblood samples that allow them to estimate gene frequencies for the two populations at anumber of genetic loci. None of the genes at these loci are subject to natural selection.Predict which of these two populations, the Amish or Hutterites, will be most genetically

similar to the European population from which they originated. Be sure to explain whyyour prediction follows from evolutionary theory.



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13. Te sociologist Edvard Westermarck argued that the propinquity effect usuallyprevents humans from mating with their siblings. (a) Describe how this psychologicalmechanism works, and (b) describe one kind of empirical evidence that indicates that it isa real part of human psychology.

14. Suppose that a new species of hominin is discovered. Researchers locate the nearly-complete skeletons of a large number of individuals. Using the pelvic bones, they are ableto identify the sex of many individuals, and they discover that males were considerablylarger than females. Te researchers hypothesize that these were monogamous creatures,and that males were devoted to their mates and helped to care for their offspring. Is this alikely scenario? Why or why not?

15. A candidate for a senatorial election in Delaware said in 1998, You know what,

evolution is a myth. If it is true that humans are products of evolution, she asked, thenWhy arent monkeys still evolving into humans? Explain two misunderstandings ofevolutionary theory embodied in this candidates statement.

16. Te ability to digest lactose as an adult is controlled by a single genetic locus with twoalleles, LAC*P and LAC*R. People who carry one or two copies of the dominant LAC*Pallele at that locus can digest lactose as adults. Individuals who are homozygous forLAC*R cannot digest lactose as adults. Amongst the Beja, a north African people, 84% ofpeople can digest milk as adults.

(a) Assuming that the population is in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium at the lactoseabsorption locus, compute the frequency of the LAC*P allele. Be sure to showyour work.

(b) Tere is much evidence that the ability to digest lactose as an adult is stronglybenecial among nomadic camel pastoralists like the Beja. One might think that thisimplies that all of the Beja should be able to digest lactose (or, in other words, thefrequency of the LAC*P allele should be equal to one). Explain why the fact that LAC*P isdominant means that we shouldnt be surprised that LAC*P has not yet reached 100%.

17. In some human societies, women routinely have multiple sexual partners. Tereforethe paternity of their children is ofen in doubt. In these societies, a man tends not toinvest in who he believes to be his own children, but rather to invest in his sisterschildren. Use Hamiltons rule to explain why it may be adaptive for a man in such a societyto invest in his sisters kids instead of his own. Be sure to state and explain Hamiltons rule.



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18. Provide and explain one piece of genetic evidence to support the conclusion that thehuman species is not organized into a small number of biologically meaningful categoriescalled races.

19. Explain why natural selection on cultural variation can favor the spread of maladaptivebehavior, such as dangerous hobbies or martyrdom. In your answer, be sure to explain thecultural analog of Darwins postulates.

20. In humans, when infanticide occurs, it is typically the mother or her relatives that killor abandon the child. Explain two circumstances under which natural selection wouldfavor infanticide by a childs own mother.

21. At one locus that inuences human skin pigmentation, there are two possible alleles:an allele Mthat codes for darker pigmentation, and an allele mwhat codes for lighterpigmentation. Neither allele is dominant. As a result, genotype MMis darkest, followed byMm, and nally mmis lightest. In North America, the genotype frequencies at this locusare: MM 0.30, Mm 0.10, mm 0.60. (a)Show that the population is not in Hardy-Weinbergequilibrium. (b)All three genotypes have the same number of surviving offspring, and thepopulation is very large. Name twoevolutionary forces that may be responsible for thedeviation from equilibrium.

22. In a population in central Africa, the frequency of individuals with Sickle Cell disease(genotype SS) among adults is 0.12. Tere is only one alternative normal allele (A) in thepopulation, and the frequency of normal adults (AA) is 0.32.

(a) Is this population in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, at this locus? Support yourconclusion with calculations.

(b) It turns out that population geneticists have been studying this population for sometime, and the frequency of the Sickle Call allele in this population has been the same for along time. Using what you know about the biology of Sickle Cell allele, what force(s)might explain this lack of change?

23. Suppose that you were heterozygous for the PKU allele, a lethal recessive.



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(a) Assuming that the frequency of the allele is 0.001, estimate the probability that arandomly chosen member of the population is also a PKU heterozygote.

(b) What is the probability that your sibling will be a PKU heterozygote?

(c) Explain how these two numbers are relevant to the evolution of mate choice inhumans.

24. Human infants require a lot of care, so much care that one investing parent is usuallynot enough. Use this fact to explain the amount of sexual dimorphism in humans, ascompared to other apes.


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