In: Statistics and Probability
2. Male butterflies sometimes court females of other species with similar wing patterns. You are interested in how long males persist in courting the wrong female. You decide to test each male with a dead female, to control for the effect of the female’s behavior. You use three types of test females: one from the same species as the males, one from a different species with a similar wing pattern, and one from a different species with a different wing pattern. Each pair is placed in a cage, and you measure courtship time in seconds.
Female of same species: 23, 20, 17, 25, 28
Female of different species, similar pattern: 18, 27, 24, 21
Female of different species, different pattern: 22, 21, 23, 20
a. Calculate the mean, variance, and standard deviation for each group.
b. Qualitatively compare the means and standard deviations for each group. (Do they look very different? Very similar?)
c. Which statistical test would you use to look for differences? Choose between the Mann Whitney U Test, Kruskal Wallis Test, sign test, Chi-Square test of independence or goodness of fit, or the binomial test.
d. Perform the test. What is your test statistic? Can you reject your null hypothesis?
e. Give a biological reason why your test may have come out the way it did.