Tinbergen's four questions include which of the following groupings?

Tinbergen's four questions include which of the following groupings?

• A. Causation, Function, Ontogeny, Phylogeny
• B. Causation, Function, Ontogeny, Evolution
• C. Mechanism, Development, Adaptation, Ecology
• D. Etiology, Function, Growth, Lineage

Answer: (A)

Tinbergen’s framework looks at behavior from four angles: what causes it in the moment (mechanism/causation), how it develops over the animal’s lifetime (ontogeny), what its adaptive purpose is (function), and how it evolved across species over generations (phylogeny). The grouping that matches exactly this set is causation, function, ontogeny, and phylogeny, since it pairs each aspect with its corresponding question. Why this fits best: causation covers the immediate mechanisms behind the behavior, ontogeny addresses how the trait develops in an individual, function explains the trait’s adaptive value, and phylogeny traces its evolutionary history. The other options mix terms that aren’t part of Tinbergen’s quartet or substitute equivalents that aren’t standard labels for the four questions (for example, ecology or growth don’t align with the four Tinbergen questions in the same structured way, and evolution is typically aligned with phylogeny as the historical perspective).

Tinbergen’s framework looks at behavior from four angles: what causes it in the moment (mechanism/causation), how it develops over the animal’s lifetime (ontogeny), what its adaptive purpose is (function), and how it evolved across species over generations (phylogeny). The grouping that matches exactly this set is causation, function, ontogeny, and phylogeny, since it pairs each aspect with its corresponding question.

Why this fits best: causation covers the immediate mechanisms behind the behavior, ontogeny addresses how the trait develops in an individual, function explains the trait’s adaptive value, and phylogeny traces its evolutionary history. The other options mix terms that aren’t part of Tinbergen’s quartet or substitute equivalents that aren’t standard labels for the four questions (for example, ecology or growth don’t align with the four Tinbergen questions in the same structured way, and evolution is typically aligned with phylogeny as the historical perspective).