1.

a) Intrasexual selection occurs when males of the same species compete for the
opportunity to mate with a female of the opposite sex. Widow birds do this by jumping,
so the one with the highest jumps and stamina displays the highest fitness and is able to
mate with another bird
b)Intersexual selection is another word for female choice because females of the species
choose their mate based off of the males qualities. The widow birds do this by having
long tails, and bright/vibrant feathers

2. The reasoning for these theories come from females mating with birds who display these
qualities and as a result, passing down those genes so more birds of those qualities will
be produced. This is natural selection choosing the birds with the brightest feathers,
longest tails, and best stamina.

3. The height and time spent jumping during their mating rituals display stamina to females,
and their bright feathers and long tail show how good they are at avoiding predators

4. An experiment to prove this theory could be by clipping the tails or painting the feathers
of the birds to see if this affects the decision of the females in intersexual selection.
Hypothesis: If we clip the tails/darken the feathers of the widow birds, they wont be
selected by females.

5. Their mating rituals make the birds an easy target for any predators, and their bright
colors and long tails make them easier to spot and more difficult to escape

6. The color vibrancy of the birds determine whether or not the birds will catch the attention
of any perspective females, however the stamina and height of the birds jumps
determine whether or not they will be chosen and have a full nest

7. Hypothesis: If the bird has a longer tail, then it will mate have have more eggs in its nest
and earlier than the birds with shorter tails.

8. The results support our hypothesis because the birds with the extended tails were shown
to have nests with more eggs which proves that they were selected by the females

9. In terms of sexual selection, tail size is a big factor for females when they are looking for
a mate because the males with the longest tails all had more active nests

10. The second and third group acted as a control to see whether or not the glue on the
birds would make a difference when mating. However, since the variation of birds with
unaffected tails and reglued tails dont have a great difference in active nest numbers, it
can be disregarded that glue has an effect on mating
11. Start lengthening the tails of all the widowbirds to extreme lengths to see how this affects
not only mating, but survival. The longer the tail, the harder to escape predators, and this
is very evident in nature, especially when looking at the limited mobility of the peacock

12. The purpose of this next experiment was to show how despite being apart of different
species where the average tail length is shorter, the females still only care about the trait
of tail length

13. The first chart shows that the average tail length is only about 6-7cm, however when an
outlier of 22cm is introduced, the next chart shows that that the outlier group had the
highest number of active nests

14. The results do support my hypothesis because despite being apart of different species,
females only care about the length of the tail, despite it being ridiculously long compared
to the average length of the short tailed species

15. The reason that the tails arent getting longer is because of predators. The tail size is
already a disadvantage in nature because it hinders flight and agility, if they were to
keep getting larger, it would be impossible for birds to escape predators, and the birds
with these ridiculously long tales most likely were eaten before they could mate.