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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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., […]
Abstract: Climate change is a growing threat to population health globally, with infants and young children living in low income and lower-and-middle income countries at particularly high risk of experiencing health and nutritional challenges. The sources of these challenges include alterations to breastfeeding practices, decreased access to food, due to lower crop and fishing yields and higher […]
Abstract: The theory of developmental origins of health and disease predicts pregnancy and infancy to be sensitive early periods of development with long term impacts on trajectories of growth and health across the life course. At a population level, preterm births have been linked to stressful group events, including natural disasters and sociopolitical stressors. Similarly, […]
Aggression and reproductive interference are common forms of behavioral interference between closely related species. These interactions often arise as incidental byproducts of everyday activities such as defending resources or competing for mates. Yet, although they resemble familiar within-species behaviors, their ecological and evolutionary consequences can be quite different when they occur between species. Behavioral interference […]
Abstract:Cousin marriage, practised by over 10% of the world's population, restructures kinship networks by overlapping blood and affinal ties. Theory makes competing predictions about how this affects women. "Protection" accounts argue that consanguinity aligns spouses' interests and increases kin oversight, reducing coercion. "Constraint" accounts emphasise that dense kin involvement can prioritise family cohesion over women's […]
Abstract: In virtually all human societies, men and women form stable pair bonds, male reproductive skew is low, children receive considerable care and resources from both of their parents, and nuclear families are part of a set progressively larger social units that commonly include kin, affines, and unrelated members of the same ethnic group. Understanding […]
Abstract: The study of animal consciousness is becoming a respectable domain of study, which has implications for neuroscience, evolutionary biology and ethics. In this lecture I discuss the theoretical commitments of different naturalistic approaches to animal consciousness and point to markers of consciousness. I suggest that an approach focusing on cognitive capacities in humans that […]
