What is the difference between a mechanistic and survival value question

Extrapolating such features as criteria for animal consciousness without knowledge about how they are linked to human consciousness is an oversimplification that most likely leads to premature conclusions about animal consciousness. Pelicans have a large wing span that enables fast flight. If we expand this criterion across species without knowledge about the physics of flight, we reach the false prediction that falcons are slow flyers and marabous are fast flyers.

Consciousness is one of the last biological phenomena about which we do not have a solid idea as to how and when it appeared and evolved in evolution. The conclusion of the above discussion is that in order to identify the adaptive value of consciousness, the relationships between the brain, behavior, and consciousness must be understood. Thus, the question of how the mind emerged in evolution the mind-evolution problem is tightly linked with the question of how the mind emerges from the brain the mind-body problem.

Until then, I argue that strong claims about the evolution of consciousness based on the evolution of cognition are premature and unfalsifiable. The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and approved it for publication.

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Bateson, P. Tinbergen's four questions: an appreciation and an update. Trends Ecol. Bronfman, Z. The transition to minimal consciousness through the evolution of associative learning.

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The research in this paper has significant originality as there is little research, to date, evident on the alternative view, of the implementation of TQM, espoused by Spencer The research contributes to the literature by demonstrating that the application of TQM can be both mechanistic and organic, encouraging the debate to focus on the nature of the variation of implementation as a subject of discussion in its own right.

Moore, B. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Report bugs here. Please share your general feedback. You can join in the discussion by joining the community or logging in here.

You can also find out more about Emerald Engage. Which models or hypotheses currently have the most support? Predation influences demography and individual fitness in some ecological settings. Discuss scenarios where predation plays an important ecological role and others where it appears to be less important.

In cases where predation has a lower impact on population processes, discuss potential mechanisms for this lack of effect. Plants defend themselves against herbivores using a variety of mechanisms, including constitutive and induced defenses.

Describe these two major categories of defenses, with examples. What evidence is there for costs and benefits associated with these strategies? Do the same concepts of constitutive and induced defenses have any utility outside of plants? To what extent are the outcomes of species interactions context-dependent?

Does the amount of variation differ among the types of species interactions that exist in nature? What factors drive the variable outcomes of interactions? What are the broader consequences or implications of context-dependent outcomes in species interactions? What are the drivers of diversity? And what is the importance of diversity — at the population, species, and genotype level — for ecosystem function?

Considering any particular lineage or group of organisms, discuss factors involved in the origin, maintenance and distribution of species-level diversity. What mechanisms are postulated to explain coexistence of species, and hence underlie the maintenance of species diversity? Which mechanisms have the strongest theoretical support? Which have the strongest empirical support? The theory of island biogeography predicts species richness based upon the distance of the island from the mainland and the size of the island.

Describe how these two factors interact with colonization and extinction rates to predict species richness. Under what conditions i. Briefly describe the unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography in terms of its major postulates, and evidence for these. In particular, discuss the issue of ecological equivalence, both the role it plays in the theory and some of the ways that it has been interpreted and misinterpreted by the wider ecological community.

What is the current state of understanding with respect to the global latitudinal gradient in diversity? In early , Dan Janzen and Joe Connell independently postulated a mechanism that sustains tropical rainforest biodiversity.

This results in negative density dependence of individual species. Summarize evidence for or against the hypothesis, with reference to specific systems where possible, that need not be restricted to the tropical biome. In general, how is predator or consumer diversity related to prey or resource diversity? What alternative hypotheses might lead to the expectations of positive, negative, complex, or no relationship between diversity at these trophic levels?

In the literature, there has been continuing discussion of the relative importance of top-down versus bottom-up processes in structuring systems and in determining their resulting complexity and function. Start by discussing the concepts of top-down and bottom-up processes giving examples of these processes, then discuss the role that bottom-up versus top-down processes play in structuring communities. Include in your answer your position on the relative importance of these two types of processes in structuring systems.

Also, the vast majority of studies investigating relationships between organismal diversity and community processes involve tens of species. What do you think you might learn if you could do the same community experiments using thousands of species?

In a given area, the number of species interactions is hypothesized to asymptote more quickly than the diversity of unique species. Explain why this pattern may happen.

Would you expect this pattern to hold for both tropical and temperate communities? Why or why not? Under what circumstances would you expect change in a plant or animal community aboveground to be reflected in change in the biotic community belowground? What is the stress gradient hypothesis? What research approaches have been used to test it against empirical data, and what are strengths and weaknesses of these approaches? What are implications of the stress gradient hypothesis for how species respond to environmental change e.

What is a niche? Describe how the niche concept serves to bridge the fields of ecology and evolutionary biology. How do niches evolve? Ecosystem Ecology All ecosystems are controlled by a combination of physical and biological processes. Present arguments and examples for both physical and biological processes structuring an ecosystem of your choice.

Compare and contrast the biogeochemical cycles of N, P, and C. Include the origins and importance of gaseous, liquid, and solid phases in soils organic, primary mineral, extractable. Discuss the occurrence of limitations of these nutrients to plant growth — specifically, which of these nutrients is most often growth limiting and why?

Discuss approaches that you might use for taking an inventory of the carbon and nutrients in a grassland or forest ecosystem. What are some pros and cons of different methods? What is the definition of an ecosystem service, and what are some examples of different categories of ecosystem services? Thinking of your study system, are there ways you could quantify changes in different types of services in response to alternate management actions? How do common tools used to assess net primary productivity generate similar or dissimilar estimates of NPP at different spatial and temporal scales?

In the process of answering the question, please describe the different methods, their strengths and weaknesses, and where and when they provide similar and dissimilar estimates of NPP? What are the consequences of the different chemical bond structures of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus for ecosystem processes? How would the availability of these resources alter the abundance or function of microbial communities? What are the mechanisms for evolution within the microbial community given an increase in the relative availability of nitrogen relative to phosphorus?

Landscape Ecology How does landscape heterogeneity influence the distribution of resources, and the fluxes of essential resources water, nutrients, energy within and among landscapes? First, discuss some fundamental approaches to scaling that have emerged within the field of landscape ecology. Second, relate these approaches to the problem of scaling up trophic interactions across ecological hierarchies, and to broad geographic extents.

Many studies in landscape ecology make use of species distribution models; how is habitat generally represented in habitat-based species distribution models?

What are some strengths and limitations to these commonly applied methods, and what criticisms have been levied against them? What would be your ideal method to model habitat, and what are some limitations to achieving this goal? Global Change Ecology What is the evidence that climate change is occurring, and what is the evidence that it is human caused? Describe some of the effects of climate change on species distributions, community composition, and ecosystem function.

How is climate change influencing evolutionary processes? As part of your answer, include both a contemporary and a paleontological example. How do the characteristics of species affect their ability to thrive versus decline in the face of anthropogenic change?

The accelerating spread of non-native species is a major component of anthropogenic global change. In answering these questions, summarize empirical evidence and discuss and evaluate the conceptual frameworks that have been proposed to address these topics. A number of ideas have been developed to understand the process of invasion and why non-native species often behave differently in systems that they have invaded as compared to their native systems.

Describe of the most influential of these ideas and provide examples that illustrate them. How do individual organisms and populations of organisms respond to environmental change, such as shifts in temperature, rainfall, and competitive interactions at different time scales, from seconds through years and generations?

Can the magnitude of a response at one time scale e. What are some of the constraints that limit the responses of wild populations to natural selection? What is the evidence for natural selection in the wild, and how variable is it in terms of direction and intensity? How do we measure natural selection in wild populations?

How would you do this in your study system? In answering this question, include techniques that have been used for decades as well as more recent molecular approaches.

Compare and contrast the effects of selection, random genetic drift and gene flow on genetic diversity within and among populations. What is the relative importance of random genetic drift and directional natural selection as causes of population differentiation in quantitative traits, and should the degree of divergence in neutral marker loci predict the degree of divergence in genes coding quantitative traits?

Compare and contrast stabilizing, directional and disruptive selection. Use graphs and give examples of each. What are five of the most important discoveries in evolutionary biology since Darwin?

Write a paragraph on each justifying your choice. What are some notable mechanisms of evolution that Darwin had wrong or was not aware of and how has modern biology corrected these mistakes? What evolutionary pressures create generalists? You may discuss specialists and generalists with respect to any niche axis you choose resources, habitats, etc. What is local adaptation? How is local adaptation measured? What is adaptive phenotypic plasticity? Include in your answer to this question an explanation as to why, since adaptations are traditionally thought of as genetically fixed traits, an adaptation can be plastic.

Provide ecological examples of adaptive phenotypic plasticity. Be sure to explain in these examples why the plasticity you describe is adaptive. As a part of your answer, comment on the current utility of this theory in evolutionary biology.