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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260601T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20260601T133000
DTSTAMP:20260331T234834Z
CREATED:20251120T235457Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260331T234834Z
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SUMMARY:Ashley Mensing\, Dept of Anthropology\, UCLA. Title: Early life adversity and life history correlates in wild white-faced capuchins: physiological mechanisms and fitness outcomes
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: \nOrganisms that develop under adversity often differ from their peers in stress physiology\, behavior\, and reproductive timing. Life history frameworks offer a powerful lens for making sense of this variation\, proposing that these differences reflect developmental responses calibrated to early environmental conditions. Yet the mechanistic pathway connecting early adversity to physiological changes to behavioral shifts to life history outcomes has rarely been traced empirically within wild populations\, leaving core assumptions about how this process unfolds largely untested. \nI draw on long-term data from the Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project in Costa Rica to examine whether early adversity in wild white-faced capuchins (Cebus imitator) generates the downstream physiological\, behavioral\, and life history changes that these frameworks anticipate. I first characterize early environmental harshness and its relationship to stress physiology\, then ask whether physiological variation connects to behavioral and life history shifts in the expected directions. By tracing this pathway empirically in a wild primate\, this work offers a window into how and whether the predictions embedded in life history approaches hold when tested mechanistically in a system with rich longitudinal data. These findings have implications for how we study developmental plasticity and the promises and limitations of applying life history frameworks to individual-level developmental trajectories. \nThis talk will be presented via Zoom: \nhttps://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=0YGsaJFEdLd5cMsOhTh465nwJubz9o.1\nMeeting ID: 943 0873 0584\nPasscode: 308291
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/tba-2/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261005T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261005T133000
DTSTAMP:20260903T050340Z
CREATED:20260903T050340Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260903T050340Z
UID:238632-1791201600-1791207000@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Arnon Lotem\, Visiting Professor UCLA\, Title: Evolution of diverse (and advanced) cognitive abilities through adaptive fine-tuning of learning and chunking mechanisms
DESCRIPTION:Understanding the evolution of advanced cognition requires explaining how it could have gradually evolved through selection acting on heritable variations in simpler cognitive mechanisms. Making use of a previously proposed theory\, I will explain how the evolution of cognitive abilities can be captured by the fine-tuning of basic learning and chunking mechanisms. Specifically\, I will demonstrate how the process by which elements are combined into chunks and associated with other chunks\, or elements\, may be critical for what the brain can do\, and that it must be fine-tuned to ecological conditions in order to produce adaptive behaviors.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/arnon-lotem-visiting-professor-ucla-title-evolution-of-diverse-and-advanced-cognitive-abilities-through-adaptive-fine-tuning-of-learning-and-chunking-mechanisms/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261019T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261019T133000
DTSTAMP:20260903T050553Z
CREATED:20260903T050553Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260903T050553Z
UID:238635-1792411200-1792416600@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Kristopher Smith\, Washington State University\, Title: Long-distance friends and collective action in fisheries management
DESCRIPTION:The management of shared natural resources often hinges on local cooperation\, yet the social networks linking communities across space can both complicate and enable collective action. This talk examines how long-distance friendships—relationships that bridge community boundaries—shape trust\, cooperation\, and participation in fisheries management in coastal Tanzania. Drawing on theoretical models and multi-site ethnographic and survey data from the Tanga Sociality and Fisheries Project\, I show that long-distance friendships provide key forms of material support similar to local friendships\, suggesting they are a resilient social strategy for managing ecological and economic risk while fostering interdependence across villages. In turn\, people with more long-distance friends express greater trust in non-local partners and are more likely to engage in collective monitoring and reporting of destructive fishing practices. Finally\, I introduce a new measure\, “long-distance orientation\,” capturing individual variation in the motivation and capacity to form and sustain these ties\, highlighting psychological and structural factors that facilitate cooperation at a distance. Together\, these findings suggest that long-distance relationships can serve as a foundation for scaling up collective action and designing management systems that bridge community boundaries.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/kristopher-smith-washington-state-university-title-long-distance-friends-and-collective-action-in-fisheries-management/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261102T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261102T133000
DTSTAMP:20261009T181114Z
CREATED:20260909T183811Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261009T181114Z
UID:238639-1793620800-1793626200@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Sara Lowes\, University of California San Diego\, Title: Culture at a Crossroads: Traditional beliefs in Contemporary Africa
DESCRIPTION:Sub-Saharan Africa is experiencing large-scale cultural change. Christianity has spread widely and is now nearly universally adopted by non-Muslim populations. Despite this\, traditional spiritual beliefs remain deeply rooted and continue to ground social\, economic\, and political life. Descriptive accounts– especially by African scholars– suggest that Christianity’s universal doctrine\, which posits a single god and a single path to salvation\, has had adverse consequences for traditional beliefs. We examine this relationship using data from the DRC and across Africa. Text analyses of sermons reveal that traditional customs and beliefs are frequently mentioned and almost always portrayed in a negative light. Behavioral experiments in the DRC show that individuals known to hold traditional beliefs are treated less prosocially and that antisocial norms and negative stereotypes support this behavior. Such effects are not found for any other characteristic; they appear among all subgroups of our sample; and they intensify with economic development. Patterns in cross-Africa survey data are consistent with the Congolese experimental findings. Finally\, consistent with Christianity being a source of these effects\, we find that in both the experiments and surveys\, the findings are stronger in areas with more exposure to colonial missionary activity.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/sara-lowes-university-of-california-san-diego-title-tbd/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261116T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261116T133000
DTSTAMP:20261009T181023Z
CREATED:20260909T183947Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261009T181023Z
UID:238642-1794830400-1794835800@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Lee Koren\, Bar Ilan University\, Title: Sex\, survival\, and steroids: Lessons from 27 years of rock hyrax research
DESCRIPTION:In this talk\, I will share what I have learned about how endocrine mechanisms interact with environmental and social factors to shape variation in fitness-related outcomes in a wild social mammal. Drawing on nearly three decades of data from free-ranging rock hyraxes (Procavia capensis)\, I will discuss how male reproductive tactics are associated with divergent investment in sexual signaling\, sperm production\, and reproductive success\, mediated in part by testosterone. I will then present results showing that male longevity is explained by the interaction between testosterone and cortisol. Throughout the talk\, I will also discuss evidence for sexual conflict that has emerged from our long-term study and consider the importance of examining sex differences through long-term studies of animals in their natural environments. Together\, my findings highlight the role of hormones in mediating mating strategies and life-history trade-offs and demonstrate how phenotypic flexibility can arise from the integration of intrinsic condition and extrinsic pressures in a complex social system.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/lee-koren-bar-ilan-university-title-tbd/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261130T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20261130T133000
DTSTAMP:20261009T180915Z
CREATED:20260909T184043Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261009T180915Z
UID:238645-1796040000-1796045400@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Joon Hwang\, University of California Santa Barbara\, Title: How does human mobility across scales shape responses to environmental and social pressures?
DESCRIPTION:Mobility has long enabled humans to access dispersed resources\, inhabit diverse environments\, and sustain social connections across communities. Mobility also operates across spatial and temporal scales\, from everyday movement to larger-scale relocation and migration\, echoing the distinction between logistical and residential mobility among hunter-gatherers. This talk brings together three lines of research spanning this broad mobility spectrum to examine how different social and ecological contexts shape human mobility and how these forms of mobility in turn enable or constrain people’s efforts to sustain livelihoods and respond to environmental and social pressures. First\, I examine remittances as a form of hybrid mobility connecting migrants with those who remain in origin communities through financial transfers\, exploring how spatial patterns of climate risk shape these connections and their implications for recipients’ risk perceptions\, adaptation\, and well-being. Second\, I shift the focus from migration to daily mobility among Shodagor fisher-traders in Bangladesh\, examining how everyday movement mediates associations between climatic stress and daily income\, and how these pathways vary across seasons and livelihood activity. Third\, I examine everyday mobility among enslaved people on a nineteenth-century Georgia plantation\, exploring how labor assignments and surveillance structured movement and how both movement and interruptions to labor could create opportunities for resistance. Together\, these studies highlight how mobility across spatial and temporal scales shapes access to resources and opportunities for action in diverse contexts\, with its costs and benefits depending on environmental conditions and power relations governing movement and labor.
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/joon-hwang-university-of-california-santa-barbara-title-tbd/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
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