Tinbergen’s 4 Questions: A Lecture by Dr. David Sloan Wilson

Video Date: Jul 6, 2017

Topics covered: "The Methods and Aims of Ethology" by Niko Tinbergen, behavioral traits, multilevel selection, cultural evolution, and extended evolutionary synthesis.

Tinbergen’s 4 Questions are:

“What is the function of the trait (assuming is has a function)?
What is the mechanism of the trait, which causes it to exist in a physical sense?
How did the trait develop during the lifetime of the organism?
What is the evolutionary history of the trait (phylogeny)?