Molecular and Developmental Biology

Griffiths, Paul E.

doi:10.1002/9780470756614.ch12

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 66 publications

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“…Only a small number of zebra finches were trained because extensive frequency-range data for this species are already available (see Weisman, Njegovan, Williams, Cohen, & Sturdy, 2004). The chickadees were sexed by blood DNA analysis (Griffiths, 2000), and finches were sexed by beak color and plumage (Zann, 1996). None of the birds had prior experience with the stimuli used in these experiments.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequency-range discriminations and absolute pitch in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli), and zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata).

Lee¹,

Charrier²,

Bloomfield³

et al. 2006

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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The acoustic frequency ranges in birdsongs provide important absolute pitch cues for the recognition of conspecifics. Black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli), and zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) were trained to sort tones contiguous in frequency into 8 ranges on the basis of associations between response to the tones in each range and reward. All 3 species acquired accurate frequency-range discriminations, but zebra finches acquired the discrimination in fewer trials and to a higher standard than black-capped or mountain chickadees, which did not differ appreciably in the discrimination. Chickadees' relatively poorer accuracy was traced to poorer discrimination of tones in the higher frequency ranges. During transfer tests, the discrimination generalized to novel tones when the training tones were included, but not when they were omitted.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frequency-range discriminations and absolute pitch in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli), and zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata).

Lee¹,

Charrier²,

Bloomfield³

et al. 2006

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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“…These researchers maintain that biological form in both development (ontogeny) and evolution (phylogeny) is constrained not so much by historical contingencies and pathways as by relational laws , which govern development, morphological structure, and interacting ecologies (Gilbert and Epel ). This means, contra the standard neo‐Darwinian view, that certain morphological forms are possible and even inevitable while others are not (Goodwin , 107; Griffiths , b). Other evolutionary biologists such as Simon Conway Morris and George McGhee have investigated instances of the evolutionary convergence of biological form, showing how countless different historical evolutionary trajectories, which began from radically dissimilar starting places, have arrived at the same morphological destination (Conway Morris , 151; McGhee ).…”

Section: Post‐darwinian Responses To the Problem Of Animal Sufferingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Beyond this, the concept of “innate instinct” as a useful explanatory category has come under serious scientific fire. Many philosophers of biology have judged the genetic “concept of innateness [to be] irretrievably confused” (Griffiths , b, 70) even as biologists have found that much animal “behavior is emergent at the phenotypic level” rather than reducible to the level of instinct or genes (Reid , 337).…”

Section: The Theological Significance Of Animal Intentions and Choicementioning

confidence: 99%

Animal Suffering, Evolution, and the Origins of Evil: Toward a “Free Creatures” Defense

Moritz¹

2014

Zygon

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Does an affirmation of theistic evolution make the task of theodicy impossible? In this article, I will review a number of ancient and contemporary responses to the problem of evil as it concerns animal suffering and suggest a possible way forward which employs the ancient Jewish insight that evil-as resistance to God's will that results in suffering and alienation from God's purposes-precedes the arrival of human beings and already has a firm foothold in the nonhuman animal world long before humans are ever tempted to go astray. This theological intuition is conferred renewed relevance in light of the empirical reality of evolutionary gradualism and continuity and in view of the recent findings of cognitive ethology. Consequently, I suggest that taking biological evolution seriously entails understanding "moral evil" as a prehuman phenomenon that emerges gradually through the actions and intentions of "free creatures" which-as evolutionary history unfolded-increasingly possessed greater levels of freedom and degrees of moral culpability.

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“…Recently even philosophers of science formulate a basic critic. I just cite (Griffiths, 2002). "The synthetic theory bypassed what were at the time intractable questions of the actual re lationship between stretches of chromosomes and phenotypic traits.…”

Section: Evolutionary Computation and Theories Of Evolutionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evolutionary Computation

Banzhaf¹,

Hu²

2019

Evolutionary Biology

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Evolutionary computation (EC) is the area of computer science and engineering that concerns itself with algorithms derived from formalizing natural evolution. This is part of a larger effort to draw inspiration from biological systems for computational purposes. Evolutionary computation methods have been used to solve optimization problems, to model systems, and to recognize patterns among other application tasks. Due to their reliance on stochasticity, they are characterized as heuristic search methods. The main features of evolutionary computation methods are their reliance on populations of searchers, the stochasticity of the search processes through mutation and recombination operations, and the application of relative strength as their selection criterion. The principle of cumulative selection allows searchers to continuously improve solutions until predefined termination criteria for the algorithms are fulfilled. The literature on evolutionary computation is comprised of a large body of proposals for algorithmic variants including hybridization schemes with other algorithms; of theoretical examinations of convergence features and other characteristics of particular variants; and of empirical studies of their performance under various testing environments, which are either constructed artificially or taken from practical applications to benchmark these variants. Furthermore, individual practical applications are published as stand-alone contributions to various fields of engineering, science, and other disciplines. Besides explicit fitness, the selection criteria for solution quality driven by external purposes like particular applications, other algorithms are studied under intrinsic selection criteria like reproductive success in an environment. Algorithms of this type come under the heading of digital or computational evolution and intend to more closely model the natural systems EC algorithms draw inspiration from. This entails studies of robustness and evolvability under various systems settings, as well as examinations of the power of algorithms to provide creative novel solutions under more-natural conditions like in an ecosystem.

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Molecular and Developmental Biology

Cited by 8 publications

References 66 publications

Frequency-range discriminations and absolute pitch in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli), and zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata).

Frequency-range discriminations and absolute pitch in black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli), and zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata).

Animal Suffering, Evolution, and the Origins of Evil: Toward a “Free Creatures” Defense

Evolutionary Computation

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