A study finds a positive correlation between the number of spots on the tail of male peacocks and their mating success. What would be the best followup experiment?
A. Count the number of spots on female tails and measure mating success.
B. Remove spots or add artificial spots to male tails and determine female responses.
C. Measure the sperm count of males and compare to spot count.
D. Inject testosterone and observe changes in spot count.
Clarify question:
What is the key concept addressed by the question?
What type of thinking is required?
Gather Content:
What do you already know about sexual selection and planning an experiment? What other information is related to the question?
Choose Answer:
Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?
Reflection:
Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?
B. Remove spots or add artificial spots to male tails and determine female responses.
Clarify question:
What is the key concept addressed by the question?
Planning an experiment to determine if the spots are the only thing effecting sexual selection.
What type of thinking is required?
This is an analyze question, the choices you are being given are follow-up experiments to see if the correlation between spots and mating hold true.
Gather Content:
What do you already know about sexual selection and planning an experiment? What other information is related to the question?
This question concerns sexual selection. In peafowl, more spots equals more mating but there could be a third factor involved. The goal of the next experiment is to test only the variable of spots and see if just a variation in spots alone produces a change in mating success. Is the number of spots the main factor when a peahen picks a peacock? In order to determine if the link were real, a researcher would need several peacocks that were similar in every way (same size, same age, same level of fitness) but they differed in spot number. An experiment like that would be able to provide evidence to show that the link between spots and mating success is real.
Choose Answer:
Given what you now know, what information is most likely to produce the correct answer?
The experimental design that involves adding and removing spots is the best choice.
Reflection:
Did your problem-solving process lead you to the correct answer? If not, where did the process break down or lead you astray? How can you revise your approach to produce a more desirable result?
Did you get the correct answer? The key to this question is to understand the difference between correlation and causation.
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