Question

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. What is one possibility for the persistence of the two phenotypes in this population

Answer 1

Frequency-dependent selection

Step-by-step explanation:

Frequency-dependent selection is a type of natural selection where the fitness or reproductive success of a particular phenotype/genotype in the population is dependent on its frequency in the population. This type of natural selection can be both positive or negative. Frequency-dependent selection is a critical process that helps to maintain the genetic variability at population and species levels. A known example of frequency-dependent selection (positive) is the mimicry of butterflies, where selection can favor non-poisonous butterflies that show the same colors as poisonous butterflies.