Hello I was hoping if anyone could please help me answer this question. It is fo

Question

Hello I was hoping if anyone could please help me answer this question. It is for my Evolutionary Biology class and is due tomorrow. Please help!

You are conducting a study on the preferences of female lyre birds for male song type. You already know that females prefer long duration calls, but you are interested in whether females also prefer variation in frequency calls (birds that have lots of variation in frequency) over low variation frequency calls: larger birds can produce more frequencies so a variable call might indicate a larger male. So you create a set of four artificial male calls that are all the same length but vary in frequency: not variable, low-medium variation, high-medium variation, and very high variation. You also throw in a control sound of white noise. You have 40 female birds in the lab (all housed individually under identical conditions) so you need to present all 40 females with all the calls to get a good sample size for your experiment. You test the females, one at a time, in a soundproof testing chamber. For each female, you play the sounds in following order: white noise, very low call, low-medium call, medium-high call, and then very high call, and then observe which speaker they hopped to and spent more time with after the final call, indicating preference. You discover that out of the 40 females, 33 preferred the very high call, 6 preferred the medium low call, and 1 preferred the medium high call. This is very strong evidence supporting your hypothesis that holds up after statistical testing: females definitely prefer high variation in frequency calls to low variation calls, regardless of call duration. You write up your results into a scientific paper to get them published but the reviewers reject your paper, saying there was a fatal flaw in your study design. What was the problem with your study, why is it a problem, and what should you have done instead.

Explanation / Answer

The problem with the study is that , in the experiment there was a set up of artificial male calls set up , as we know that hearing system is very well developed in birds and they can differentiate between their partners very easily and also they are very specific. so the artificial set of male call that is made in the experiment is not necessary that it would match to the natural frequency of the male birds . so instead of taking artificial male set one should take natural population of males.

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