For this week, I chose to read about Behavioral Adaptations for Survival, Choosing Where to Live, the Evolution of Reproductive Behavior and the Evolution of Mating System. The reading was just a skim-through to understand more about what kinds of animal behaviors I am interested in. At the meeting, I discussed about some fascinating factual statements about dominance hierarchy (in which individuals that live together in groups interact aggressively for a while before sorting themselves out from top dog to bottom mutt; the alpha male will signal submissiveness to the lower-ranking male; from Alcock pg332). We also talked about what kind of approach I would want for my internship, whether it will be topic/question-orientated or it will be an organism-based project. The conclusion was that I keep my options open while thinking about what my experiment will be like: using natural organisms that I can find around the area or lab organisms. For the next meeting, I will read more about male reproductive success and dominance.
I like how you are focusing your ideas in this post. Keep up this process until you have created a hypothesis.
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