Partial Listing of Topics for Position Papers

Examples of Controversies

Week 1-4: Foundations
            Nature/nurture
            Origin vs maintenance
            Levels of analysis
            Fitness proxies

Week 5: The BE Approach
            Critiques of optimality modeling

Week 6: Mechanisms
            Modularity in cognition
            Meaning of information

Week 7: Foraging and uncertainty
            Cognition and discounting, work, uncertainty

Week 8: Contests and social organization
            Genetics of dominance rank
           
Week 9: Signaling
            Handicap principle
            Cheating and Conventional signaling

Week 10: Altruism
            Defining altruism
            Measuring inclusive fitness
            Direct vs indirect fitness
            The haplodiploidy explanation for eusociality
            The eusociality continuum

Week 11: Indirect genetic effects
            Critiques of selection theory/ QG & ESS

Week 12: Sex
            The origin of sex
            Measures of sexual selection
            Triver’s PI theory      

Week 13: Mate choice
Cryptic female choice
            Sexy son hypothesis
            Handicaps
            Definitions of preferences
            Sensory bias

Week 14: Sexual conflict
            Definitions
            Social selection
            Indirect vs direct selection

Week 15: Parental care
            Concorde fallacy
            Definitions of investment
            Costs of reproduction
           
Week 16: Conservation

Rapid change and Behavioral Ecology