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Study Questions for Genetics, Environment and Behavior

1. What genetic factors are responsible for the resemblance between parents and offspring? What additional genetic factors increase the resemblance between sibs (see Side Box 2.2 and Side Box 2.6)? Which is important for evolutionary change and why?


2. Describe a mutation experiment that was used to isolate a gene for nurturing in mice. Why is it important to show that mice defective in this gene can perform non-nurturing tasks like maze running or olfaction tests? What kinds of genetic effects do these additional tests detect.


3. Why are heritability estimates for sibs raised in different households preferable to sibs raised in the same household? What additional confounding factors does this design not remove from the heritability estimates?


4. You overhear someone in the coffee shop citing the following evidence regarding heritability of IQ:

"IQ must be very heritable, the correlation between fraternal twins reared by the same family is 0.59"

"Hah!" the other combatant exclaims, "The correlation between an adopted child and their unrelated sib is 0.20."

Who is right and why?


5. Compare and contrast genetic determination and condition-dependent determination of as proximate causes of alternative male strategies.


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