Biologists Know That Bats Have Different Flight Characteristics

question 46

Essay

Biologists know that bats have different flight characteristics. Some bats exhibit fast, straight, and long flights; others are moderately slow, and highly maneuverable. The flight capabilities of bats are presumably a function of (a) the characteristics of the bat wings, and (b) the laws of physics. The data presented below are wing weights in grams for certain species of bats from Nicaragua and Costa Rica. Two categories of bat species are represented: fruit-eaters and insect-eaters.
Fruit eaters:
9.9, 11.5, 47.0, 59.6, 18.2, 22.1, 22.9, 15.0, 15.4, 13.3, 38.3, 42.2, 114.3, 105.4, 80.9
Insect eaters:
23.8, 16.1, 4.2, 3.9, 7.5, 3.5, 3.9
(a)Construct two dotplots that will allow you to easily compare the distributions of the wing weights for the two categories of bats, fruit-eaters and insect-eaters.
(b)Write a short paragraph describing the features of the two plots; what do these plots tell you about the differences in wing weight for fruit- and insect-eaters?

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Definitions:

Amoeba

A type of simple, single-celled organism that moves and ingests food through extensions of its body called pseudopodia.

Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness is a condition in which a person suffers from a sense of powerlessness, arising from a traumatic event or persistent failure to succeed, resulting in resignation and passive behavior.

Avoidance Learning

A type of learning where a subject learns to perform behaviors in order to prevent or avoid an unpleasant stimulus.

Aversive Conditioning

A form of learning in which an unpleasant or harmful stimulus is associated with a particular behavior to reduce or eliminate that behavior.