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Ny Vasil – Generic generalizations within and across contexts

352 Haines Hall

Generic generalizations within and across contexts Ny Vasil Assistant Professor Psychology Department, California State University East Bay Generic generalizations about natural and social kinds (e.g., “Raccoons have rabies”; “Trader Joe’s cashiers are friendly”) shape how agents learn, explain and intervene on their environment. Yet, there’s no consensus about what underwrites people’s endorsement of generic generalizations. […]

Katrine Whiteson – May the Fiber Be with You: Gut Microbiomes from a remote Amazon village to the undergraduate lab

352 Haines Hall

May the Fiber Be with You: Gut Microbiomes from a remote Amazon village to the undergraduate lab Katrine Whiteson University of California Irvine School of Biological Sciences, co-Director, UCI Microbiome Center Bacterial and viral colonization of the human body has profound implications for human health, yet our understanding of what constitutes a “healthy microbiome” remains incomplete—especially in the […]

Annie E. Wertz – How infants learn to eat plants (and why they may not want to)

352 Haines Hall

How infants learn to eat plants (and why they may not want to) Annie E. Wertz Assistant Professor, Psychological & Brain Sciences University of California, Santa Barbara Life is mostly plants. Plants constitute an estimated 80% of the biomass on Earth and are concentrated in terrestrial environments. Millions of animal species rely on plants to […]

Erin Riley – Roadside primates: Balancing risks and rewards in anthropogenic environments

352 Haines Hall

Roadside primates: Balancing risks and rewards in anthropogenic environments Erin Riley Professor, Anthropology, San Diego State University In the contemporary era it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a primate population that has not experienced some form of anthropogenic influence. Primates living in anthropogenic spaces may benefit from access to novel food resources, such as […]

Stephan Kaufhold, UCSD. Title: Situated Simian Minds: Why Context Matters for Modeling Primate Behavior

352 Haines Hall

Unlike humans, who can maintain relationships and communities beyond temporal and spatial boundaries, nonhuman primates’ relationships are fundamentally grounded in embodied, immediate interactions. In this talk, I present two empirical studies on resource conflicts in semi-naturalistic primate groups, showing how their behavior and decision-making are best understood by considering social and ecological contexts. The first […]

Stacy Rosenbaum (Univ. Michigan) – “The long arm of “childhood:” what can other primates teach us about the early life origins of aging and resiliency?”

352 Haines Hall

Early life experiences are widely thought to shape adult behavior, health, and fitness across the tree of life. The deep evolutionary roots of these "early life effects"—seen in organisms ranging from plants to primates—have sparked considerable interest in their biological underpinnings. While individual variation in responses to early life adversity is well recognized, new research […]

Richard Karban (UC-Davis) – Plant Communication and Individual Personalities

352 Haines Hall

This talk will attempt to answer three questions: 1) Do plants communicate about their risk of herbivory? 2) Do plants have individual personalities with respect to communication? 3) Why does this matter? Biologists have known for a long time that plants sense their environments and respond accordingly, i.e., they exhibit “behavior.” Whether they communicate with […]

Bret Beheim, MPI-EVAN – “Planck’s Principle, Price’s Theorem and the Forces of Cultural Evolution” (via Zoom)

352 Haines Hall

Abstract: Physicist Max Planck famously said that "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die". This is basically a theory of human cultural change, one rooted primarily in the mechanisms of differential recruitment, inheritance and demography. If the Planck […]

Katie Sayre, UCSB – Title: “Loneliness and health: insights from the Tsimane Health and Life History Project”

352 Haines Hall

Abstract: Loneliness as a public health concern has exploded in recent years. Recognition of its widespread prevalence and presumed recency have led to declarations that a “loneliness epidemic” faces industrialized populations. Changes to certain aspects of modern life—fewer face-to-face interactions, more time spent alone, more people living by themselves—are thought to exacerbate loneliness, and imply […]

Delaney Knorr, Duke University — Title: Evolutionary Constraints on Human Pregnancy: How Social Environments and Energetic Limits Shape Maternal-Fetal Health

352 Haines Hall

Abstract: Human pregnancy is an energetically demanding and socially embedded process that requires mothers to balance competing physiological needs while maintaining fetal development. In this talk, I integrate biocultural and mechanistic approaches to examine how social, ecological, and energetic environments become biologically embedded during gestation. Drawing on mixed-methods research with Latina women in the U.S., […]