ANTH 457: TAKE-HOME PROBLEM #1 (Autumn 2009)

The following assignment is due Wednesday, October 24th, at the beginning of class. The assignment is to be done individually, not in consultation with others. Answer both sets of questions; #1 is worth 10 points, #2 = 20 points. Be sure to document your answers fully (i.e., explain the steps taken to reach them). Answers (except graph) must be typed, double-spaced; staple all pages together.

1. You are conducting research among the Yasadat, a group of subsistence farmers in interior Malaysia, and obtain the following data:

Fill in the missing data, construct a graph, and use it to answer the following questions:

What is the optimal inter-birth interval (IBI)?  Does Yasadat reproduction fit Lack's model of reproductive effort?  Explain how you reached your answers, both empirically (with reference to the numbers and the graph) and theoretically (with reference to Lack’s model, and the underlying theory of natural selection).  (Note: fertility rate = 1/IBI.)

2. The optimal prey choice (a.k.a. "optimal diet") model predicts the choice of available prey types that will maximize the rate of food capture. Use this model to evaluate the following statements about the !Kung San (quoted from Richard Lee's 1979 book on !Kung San hunter-gatherers). In each case, decide whether or not the statement is consistent with the model's predictions, and explain why or why not. (You are not asked to decide whether the statements are true or not, only whether they agree with or contradict the optimal prey-choice model.)  You will need to translate terms such as "desirable" and "attractive" into the terminology of the prey-choice model; be explicit about this.

a) "The !Kung are highly selective in their food habits. When they camp in a given area, they start out by eating the most desirable species; when these species become rare or depleted they turn to less desirable ones."

b) "Some food species are rarely eaten because they are rarely found, while others are plentiful but avoided."

c) "The lizards, snakes, and rodents attributed to the !Kung diet in other areas are not eaten by !Kung in the Dobe area. These people get plenty of meat from the more attractive large species and so have no need to bother with such unrewarding small creatures."

d) "The zebra, though large, is not a particularly difficult animal to kill with poison arrows; the only reason I can offer for its never being hunted is its scarcity."

e) "During droughts, the Tonga [a primarily agricultural people of Zimbabwe living in an environment very similar to that of the !Kung] consume portions of 21 species that are also known to the !Kung and found in their area, but are not [ever harvested] by the !Kung. The Tonga live at a population density approximately 100 times that of the Dobe !Kung."