 An optimality model can allow a behavioral ecologist to find and test such a functional description in two ways. First, an optimality model (explicitly or implicitly) includes a strategy set, which is a set of descriptions of possible behavioral strategies; the model picks out one of these strategy descriptions as the one that is maximally adaptive. On Werren’s model, the strategy set would be an (implicit) set of descriptions of the range of possible sex-ratio adjusting strategies that a jewel wasp could use (i.e. each strategy involves a different set of choices about sex ratios in a full range of relevant conditions like parasitism, superparasitism and different brood sizes). The idea is that an optimality model can pick out which member of this set is a description of the maximally adaptive strategy – on this view of what the behavioral ecologists are doing, Werren’s model is designed to pick out the optimal sex ratio egg laying strategy description from the strategy set. The hypothesis is that this description of the maximally adaptive strategy will be the correct description of what the wasp is doing. If it is the correct description, then Werren can now predict what son/daughter ratios he should see the wasp lay in cases so far unobserved. These predictions allow him to test if the description is correct – if these predictions are true, then on this view, Werren has confirmed that the description of the particular sex-ratio adjusting strategy derived from his model is the correct description of what the wasp is doing.