kruzzoli's blog

Sexual selection is the selection of certain traits based on sexual preference by one of the sexes. This is typically seen as female choice driving the evolution of ornate plumage and elaborate songs used by males during courtship. Sexually selected traits are often very costly for males and can lower survivorship, however they increase fitness. Traits can be costly due to the energy required to have them, or they can attract predators. Brightly colored feathers can be a sexually selected trait that lowers survivorship because it makes the bird more peceptible to preadators. However, colorful wings increases fitness because females are attracted to colorful wings so the male is more likely to attract mates and therefore produce more offspring. In some cases, sexual selection can result in "run-away" sexual selection in which the males evolve very elaborate forms of ornamentation that keep evolving as female preference evolves to prefer more elaborate traits. An example of this is the tail feathers of peacocks. Peacocks that have a larger surface area of eye spots have more young that grow to reproductive age, so the fitness of peacocks increases with the number of eye spots they have on their tails. This provides evidence to support the hypothesis that female peacocks have a sexual preference towards males with many eye spots, indicating high ornamentation increases fitness. 

Other coastal and below sea level cities in similar predicaments to Tokyo can learn a lot about different preventative methods that could be taken. Houston, Texas is another area prone to flooding and one of the reasons is because of the large amounts of impermeable surface, such as concrete and pavement. If Houston were to adopt something like the Watarase-yusuichi, the artificial wetland in Tokyo, or the underground regulating reservoirs, it might be able to prevent intense damage from flooding by allowing for areas that can accomodate for excess water. If Houston were to plan for some of the green or grey infrastructure found in Tokyo, natural disasters such as Hurricane Harvey may be prevented and future storms might not destroy as much of the city. Tokyo has set a standard for preventative measures that most coastal cities should use in order to better protect themselves

Ethically, it can be difficult to curb population growth. Some methods have been tried such as the one child law enforced in China but this is unethical. As people, it is in our nature to reproduce, so who’s to say we cannot continue to do this? Also, it can be difficult to prevent multiple pregnancies. Birth control is an effective method but there is still a slight chance that with even perfect birth control use, pregnancy can still occur. Then comes the choice of abortion, which is a different topic altogether but is against many religions, so people won’t use this method and then have to have a “secret” child. This leads to children who are neglected because their parents are limited to one child.

The graph for biome 1 shows seasonal variation, with the winters having below freezing temperatures and the summers ranging in temperatures between 20-30 degrees celsius.  The biome on this new planet has slightly warmer summers than this earth biome but follows a similar pattern. This biome also has more rainfall on average than earth but again, has a similar seasonal pattern. You would expect this biome to be located around 30-50 degrees latitude. On earth, this type of biome is found mostly in the northern hemisphere because the southern hemisphere lacks the landmass needed, however, since we don’t know of any land differences between the northern and southern hemisphere of this planet, it can be expected in both hemispheres. You would also expect to find plants with deciduous leaves, so they loose their leaves in the sub freezing winters. Because there is such variety seasonally, the plants would likely be well adapted to seasonal change. On earth, you find maple, birch and many other types of trees so you might find similar trees in this new biome. There is more rainfall as well so it might be expected to contain larger trees.

There are however some important  articles that show this potential genetic altering can be beneficial, such as the baby born with three parents. I know this is likely a point of argument, but I guess I “believe” in natural selection, and if someone was meant to have children, they would. Although this child was quite literally a miracle, the mother had previously lost four other children. I’m not sure how ethical my reasoning is here, and I’m not saying she doesn’t deserve to have this child, but I don’t believe we, as a race, should be altering our DNA in a way that allows us to reproduce, when clearly we shouldn’t. When you think about the population size, imagine if everyone that couldn’t physically reproduce healthy children, went through a similar process to have children. We would run out of room on this planet. This doesn’t sound quite moral, but we have processes such as natural selection for reason, meaning the most fit of our population should reproduce, and those who can’t, shouldn’t.     

Individually we each watched two videos of domestic Morgan horses, Equus caballus, at the UMass Hadley Farm. Both videos had two mares and two foals of about 6 months old. We watched and observed the behaviors of the four horses for 48 minutes and 55 seconds, created a list of behaviors, and recorded the time each behavior occurred. We compared our lists and compiled all the behaviors into six tables categorized by each type of behavior: grooming, locomotion, playing, feeding, comfort, and body positioning. We determined the categories by grouping like behaviors together and establishing certain characteristics of each category. Grooming was categorized by the horse gnawing at himself or licking. Locomotion was categorized by moving locations. Playing included interaction with other horses by nudging, jumping, or gnawing. Feeding was categorized by behaviors that included the horse’s head touching the grass and the ground. Comfort included behaviors that involve just the horse, such as tail waving, that increased the comfort of the horse or interactions between the foal and the mare. We categorized body positioning as movements to the horse’s posture while they remained stationary.

    As a group, we observed photos of warblers from the Setophega worksheet. To begin, a series of 12 common plumage characteristics for the warblers were identified. We choose to observe the presence of wing bars, if the bird had a short or long beak, the color of the throat, eye ring color, belly color, feet color, the presence of yellow feathers, the presence of bright colored feathers, rump coloration, the presence of a curved beak, if the bird had more than two feather colors, and if the crown was a different color than the body. We observed the photographs and the skin museum to observe each species and categorize the plumage characteristics. We wrote the color of each plumage feature in the table and we used “1” and “0” for traits that didn’t specify a color. The presence of wing bars, yellow feathers, bright colored feathers, more than two feather colors, and a matching crown were indicated by a 1 for yes and a 0 indicated no. A short beak was categorized by a 0 and a long beak was categorized by a 1. After evaluating each of the 33 species of Warblers for the set of characteristics determined, four of the patterns were chosen to apply to a phylogenetic tree. We choose the presence of wingbars, the presence of yellow feathers, foot coloration, and the presence of a matching crown color. We indicated the absence of wing bars with a black line on the taxa of the phylogenetic tree. On a new tree we indicated the absence of yellow feathers with a black line on the taxa of the phylogenetic tree. On another new tree, we marked the taxa of species that had a different color crown that the rest of the back with a black line. On a fourth tree, we indicated the color of the feet by using a different color line on each taxa that matches the color of the birds feet. Using the phylogenetic analysis, the characteristics were analyzed to determine any clear patterns of evolution and gene succession.

We wrote the color of each plumage feature in the table and we used “1” and “0” for traits that didn’t specify a color. The presence of wing bars, yellow feathers, bright colored feathers, more than two feather colors, and a matching crown were indicated by a 1 for yes and a 0 indicated no. A short beak was categorized by a 0 and a long beak was categorized by a 1. After evaluating each of the 33 species of Warblers for the set of characteristics determined, four of the patterns were chosen to apply to a phylogenetic tree. We choose the presence of wingbars, the presence of yellow feathers, foot coloration, and the presence of a matching crown color. We indicated the absence of wing bars with a black line on the taxa of the phylogenetic tree. On a new tree we indicated the absence of yellow feathers with a black line on the taxa of the phylogenetic tree. On another new tree, we marked the taxa of species that had a different color crown that the rest of the back with a black line. On a fourth tree, we indicated the color of the feet by using a different color line on each taxa that matches the color of the birds feet. Using the phylogenetic analysis, the characteristics were analyzed to determine any clear patterns of evolution and gene succession.

As a group, we observed photos of warblers from the Setophega worksheet. To begin, a series of 12 common plumage characteristics for the warblers were identified. We choose to observe the presence of wing bars, if the bird had a short or long beak, the color of the throat, eye ring color, belly color, feet color, the presence of yellow feathers, the presence of bright colored feathers, rump coloration, the presence of a curved beak, if the bird had more than two feather colors, and if the crown was a different color than the body. We observed the photographs and the skin museum to observe each species and categorize the plumage characteristics.  Coloration differences were shown by changing the color of the cell within the table of data, the color of the cell matched the color of the plumage. The presence of wing bars, yellow feathers, bright colored feathers, more than two feather colors, and a matching crown were indicated by a 1 for yes. A 0 indicated a no. A short beak was categorized by a 0 and a long beak was categorized by a 1. After evaluating each of the 33 species of Warblers for the set of characteristics determined, four of the patterns were chosen to apply to a phylogenetic tree.

We completed a time analysis budget using Jwatcher to indicate when certain behaviors occurred in different contexts. We watched the same 48 minutes and 55 seconds of videos that was used to create the sequential analysis and the behavior tables. We observed the behaviors of only the foals. We observed behaviors and grouped them into five categories that we defined as comfort, locomotion, grooming, feeding, and playing. Comfort included behaviors that comforted the horse, such as tail waving. Locomotion were behaviors that involved the foal moving to a new location. Grooming included bevaiors such as licking or any cleaning of the foal. Feeding was defined by behaviors where the horse fed and playing involved interactions with other foals. These behaviors were defined by the context of who was involved, either alone, including the mare, or including another foal. We used jwatcher to record when each behavior occurred and the context of each behavior. We used the data to analyze the proportion of time the foals spent doing each behavior in each context and the amount of behaviors done in each category in each context. We used a bar graph to display our results.