PSYA01H3 Chapter Notes - Chapter 3: Sociobiology, Parental Investment, Heritability
Document Summary
Biological evolution: changes that take place in the genetic and physical characteristics of a population or group of organisms over time. Adaptive significance: the effectiveness of behaviour in aiding organisms to adapt to changing environmental conditions. Ultimate causes: evolutionary conditions that have slowly shaped the behaviour of a species over generations. Proximate causes: immediate environmental events and conditions that affect behaviour. Culture: the sum of socially transmitted knowledge, customs, and behaviour patterns common to a particular group of people. Artificial selection: a procedure in which particular animals are deliberately mated to produce offspring that possess especially desirable characteristics. Natural selection: the consequence of the fact that, because there are physical and behavioural differences among organisms, they reproduce differentially. Within a given population, some animals the survivors will produce more offspring than will other animals. Reproductive success: the number of viable offspring an individual produces relative to the number of viable offspring produced by other members of the same species.
