Daniel Benyshek: University of Nevada Las VegasMaternal placentophagy, the mother’s consumption of the ‘afterbirth’ following parturition, is a ubiquitous behavior among terrestrial mammals – including non-human primates. Despite myriad hypothesized fitness-enhancing consequences of the behavior, including predator avoidance, improved lactation, enhanced care-taking behaviors, maternal analgesic effects, and the replenishment of maternal nutrients, among others, human […]

Susan Schaffnit: University of California, Santa BarbaraA global campaign to end ‘child marriage’ (i.e. marriage before 18 years) has emerged over the last decade as part of growing international commitments to address gender inequities and improve female wellbeing. Proponents of this movement assert that young brides have negligible autonomy in the marriage process and that marrying under 18 years has resolutely […]

Jeremy Koster: University of Cincinnati, OhioHumans are distinguished from other hominoids by several life history traits, including prolonged childhoods, relatively brief inter-birth intervals, and extend post-reproductive lifespans. To explain the evolution of these traits, anthropologists have hypothesized that the cognitive demands of hunting necessitate extensive learning, which promotes late maturation and inter-generational food sharing. In […]

Thomas J. H. Morgan: Arizona State UniversityThe evolution of human behavior and cognition is often studied with a combination of theory and experiment—theory is used to explore evolutionary dynamics, and generate predictions that are tested empirically. However, agent psychology is typically highly simplified and so it can remain unclear whether human behavior would produce the […]

Amy Parish: University of Southern California"Oooooh, I want to be like youuuu, ...walk like you, talk like you, tooooo." So goes the lament of Louie, the Orangutan King in “The Jungle Book”. He wishes he could be like a human. In contrast, Mogli, the human boy in the movie, thinks of himself as just one […]

Dan Blumstein: University of California, Los AngelesWhat makes certain sounds scary? I will describe insights gained from over three decades of studying alarm calls and fear screams in marmots (which are large, mostly-alpine, ground squirrels) throughout the northern hemisphere. Fear screams are remarkably similar across taxa and they seem to be particularly evocative to many […]

Angela Garcia: Arizona State University Cardiometabolic diseases (e.g. heart disease and diabetes) are the leading cause of death and morbidity worldwide. Diabetes, for example, will double in the next 30 years, with 80% of the rise occurring in middle and lower- income countries. Social, economic, and ecological landscapes often change alongside market integration and development, […]

Nandita Garud: University of California, Los AngelesThe human gut microbiome is comprised of a complex ecosystem of microbes that reside inside of us and play an important role in our health. With as many as a billion new mutations entering our microbiomes per day, bacterial genomes inside us have a great opportunity to evolve rapidly, […]

Courtney Meehan: Washington State University Throughout our evolutionary history, and in much of the world today, human infancy has been characterized by a host of ancestral traits which include frequent maternal-infant contact, on-demand breastfeeding, co-sleeping, and cooperative breeding. These ancestral characteristics have, in part, supported the development of our altricial infants and enabled reproductive success […]

Melanie Martin: University of WashingtonAcross past and present human populations, breastfeeding and weaning practices have been demonstrably varied. Though this variation is largely influenced by ecological and socioeconomic factors, comparative primate and human biological and cross-cultural evidence further suggests that flexible mixed-feeding is an evolved human strategy. In this talk, I review the differences in […]