Blue Steal Practical and Lesson Plan
Summary: The aim of this practical is to teach students about how
female preferences can vary and to demonstrate the evolution of
novel mating strategies and the cultural evolution of learning.
Introduction
Performing mate choice and preference experiments in lab is quite difficult, but having
students act like males trying to impress a female is easier and much more fun! Students will
use augmented reality (AR) tags to play this game. The goal is for groups of students to try
and determine which traits their female prefers and afterwards to try and mate with as
many females as they can. The first group to mate with a set number of females (usually 3)
is the winner!
Using Blue Steal and the associated manual, students are guided through thinking about
female preference functions, how different mating strategies maximize fitness in different
competitive contexts, and how information is passed between individuals within a
population.
Setting up the practical
In this game, students will work in groups of 2-5 (depending on the size of the class). The
game is more fun if there are between 5-10 groups of students. To play, one student in the
group should download the Blue Steal app. This app will be used to scan the AR tags that will
bring the females and objects to life on screen.
Before the practical, you will need to print out the 24 AR tags and cut each of the tags out.
The number of tags you will need will depend on the number of groups. There’s no harm in
printing a few extra sheets as the fewer the sheets, the more difficult the game.
Eight of the AR tags have females pictured on
them (in different colours or combinations) and
result in the appearance of a female on screen
when shown in front of the camera. Each of
these females has a different preference that
the students will need to discover. Some will
prefer specific objects regardless of their colour,
while other females will prefer specific colours
and ignore the objects.
The remaining 16 tags are of four different objects that occur in one of four colours.
To begin the game, select one of the four females that prefer objects of a specific colour.
Then provide each group with 8 items where each of the colours and objects are
approximately equally distributed. This way, students will discover that there are four
objects that come in one of four colours.
Tell the students that their goal is to discover
the female’s preference and impress her
enough signified by filling all four heart counters
at the top right of the screen. Before students
start, ask each group to complete questions 1
and 2, and then try to successfully mate with
the female they are given. Rather than a leading
the students through the practical, we suggest
that you let them discover things on their own. Students will ask for help and suggest the game is
broken – but make them persist! We found that it takes groups around 15 minutes to discover they
need to steal from one another. Be patient and enjoy watching them discover the secret!
At this point, groups should discover that they don’t have enough tags to win and that they need to
borrow/steal/take tags from other groups to be able to win. Most likely, groups will work with one
another to ensure everyone wins. That’s fine for now, but the game will be much more interesting
once students need to compete against one another! After they succeed, ask students to complete
questions 3 to 8.
Once all the groups finished announce a larger competition where players need to mate with 3
females to win the game (you can change this number to more or fewer females which will change
the difficulty and length of the game). We’ve used a small prize to improve competition.
To start the game, place (throw?) all the females on a single area and let the game begin! Once a
group is successful, you can provide them with another random (but different) female. At this
point, watch the group test their initial hypothesis and reform it until they discover the preference
of this new female – you’re watching science in action! We also suggest a minimal amount of
interaction with students once the game has started.
When a group wins, stop the game and let students answer the remaining 2 questions. Once
complete, you can discuss the number of matings each group attained and why they think there’s
so much variation. Ask students that lost to describe the strategy they used and why they think
they lost. Ask the winning group to explain why they think they won. Ask students how they came
up with new strategies.
You can discuss the outcome from an evolutionary perspective and ask students what they think
would happen to strategies that didn’t work? What would they think would happen as more groups
started using the same strategy? We found that the group discussion is enjoyable because students
now have a strong understanding of what is happening because of their own experiences.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International License. © 2017 arludo pty ltd.
Blue Steal Practical and Lesson Plan
Summary: You’re a scientist studying a new species of bird and
you’re trying to figure out what females of this species prefer. You
better hurry though as other scientists are trying to figure out the
same thing! Who will publish their results first?
Background
A colleague of yours, Dr. T. Ravelot, has just returned from a field trip where her team has
located a new species of bird – how exciting! Because of all the paperwork she needs to fill
in due to this new discovery, she asked whether you would like to begin some behavioural
experiments to understand more about what this new species looks for in a mate.
In your excitement to be part of this project, you blurt out some statements about how
honoured you are and how science is safe with you in between substantial arm waving and
head nodding. With a smile, your colleague leaves knowing that her research is in good
hands.
After you get the opportunity to compose yourself, you realize that you don’t know
anything about this new non-descript bird except for the few items that were collected in
the field at the collection sites. From the collection of items, you assume that the males of
this species are decorators of some kind. They must use these items to attract females and
convince them to mate with them.
It looks like you have some work ahead of you to figure out what your female likes to
successfully identify her acceptance behaviour. Before getting started, you realize it’s best
to discuss a hypothesis about her preferences with your team.
Goals
In this practical, you’ll work with a group of other students to try and impress the female
that you’re given. Download the Blue Steal app to your phone or tablet.
Once you’ve downloaded the app, make sure you collected the different augmented reality
(AR) tags for the game from your instructor. Find the female AR tag (it has a bird on it) and
place that tag in front of your camera. Once she appears, press the ‘play’ button on the
screen and you can begin presenting other tags to your female to see what she prefers.
Each correct answer will result in you filling up the female’s heart meter. You’ve won once
she has four hearts!
Start by discussing the different hypotheses that you will test and the methodology you will
use to test these hypotheses.
Let’s Begin!
1. What is the hypothesis that you will test about your female’s preference?
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2. Briefly describe the methods you will use to test this hypothesis.
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Complete after your first mating
3. Was your hypothesis correct? Why or why not?
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4. How did you refine your methodology during your first trial?
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5. What strategies did you use to complete your experiment?
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6. How did you discover that strategy?
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7. Why did that strategy work?
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8. Can you think of other strategies that would work that you can try in your next attempt?
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Complete at the end of the lab
9. Which one of your strategies was most success? And how did you discover that strategy?
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10. How many matings did your team achieve?
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If you’d like to read more about female preference and the factors that can affect these
aspects in nature, here is a short list of papers to start from:
Andersson, M. 1982. Female choice selects for extreme tail length in a widowbird. Nature
299: 818-820. (pdf)
Hedrick, A.V., Dill, L.M. 1993. Mate choice by female crickets is influenced by predation risk.
Anim. Behav. 46: 193-196 (pdf)
Girard, M.B., Elias, D.O., Kasumovic, M.M. 2015. Female preference for multi-modal
courtship: multiple signals are important for male mating success in peacock spiders. Proc.
R. Soc. 282: DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2015.2222 (pdf)
Kasumovic, M.M., M. D. Hall, and R. Brooks. 2012. The juvenile social environment
introduces variation in the preference and expression of sexually selected traits. Ecology &
Evolution. doi: 10.1002/ece3.230. (pdf)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0
International License. © 2017 arludo pty ltd.