You observe two distinct behavioral strategies among flocks of house sparrows. In one strategy, individuals (producers) search for food patches. In the other strategy, individuals (scroungers) wait for producers to find food and then feed in the patches found by the producers. The relative frequency of these strategies differs in flocks, and you observe that the scroungers have high fitness (a high feeding rate) when they are rare in a flock and low fitness when they are common in a flock. This is an example of which of the following?

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

This scenario is an example of frequency-dependent selection because the fitness of the scroungers depends on their frequency within the flock. When scroungers are rare, they have high fitness because they can exploit the food sources found by the producers without much competition. However, as their frequency increases, their fitness decreases due to increased competition among scroungers for the same food sources. This means the fitness of the scroungers changes based on how common or rare they are in the population, which is the hallmark of frequency-dependent selection.

You Observe Two Distinct Behavioral Strategies Among Flocks of House