Higher Vertebrates (Mammals and Birds) Exhibit Lateralized Behaviors, Commonly Referred

question 10

Essay

Higher vertebrates (mammals and birds) exhibit lateralized behaviors, commonly referred
to as "handedness." Recently an investigator studied the coiling behavior of the
Agkistrodon piscivorus leucostoma - more commonly known as the cottonmouth snake.
The cottonmouth is a venomous snake that spends much of its time in a coil, sometimes
coiled in a counter-clockwise direction, other times in a clockwise direction. The
investigator made many observations of coiling behavior, and calculated a "laterality
index" for 30 cottonmouths. He defined the laterality index for each snake as the
percentage of observations of the snake that were categorized as coils in the counter-
clockwise direction. In the table below the data on laterality has been separated into two
groups: females and males. $\begin{array}{l}\text { Laterality: Females }\\\begin{array}{|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|l|}\hline 58 & 55 & 61 & 54 & 64 & 60 & 42 & 49 & 56 & 42 \\\hline 59 & 55 & 55 & 60 & 66 & 70 & 49 & 51 & 57 & 43 \\\hline\end{array}\end{array}$


$\begin{array}{l}\text { Laterality: Males }\\\begin{array}{|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|c|}\hline 56 & 56 & 52 & 54 & 40 & 49 & 49 & 48 & 46 & 49 \\\hline\end{array}\end{array}$
-Construct comparative box plots of the laterality indices of female and male
cottonmouths.

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Definitions:

Supply Curve

A graphical representation showing the relationship between the price of a product and the quantity of the product that a supplier is willing to make available.

Elasticity of Supply

A metric assessing how the provision of a good changes in response to price adjustments.

Quantities Supplied

The amount of goods and services that producers are willing and able to sell at a given price over a specified period.

Price-Elasticity

A measure of how responsive the quantity demanded of a good is to a change in its price, indicating how shifts in price can affect supply and demand.