Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture

Ryan Nichols - Lineage Fitness Theory and the Lineage Manipulation and Mutualism Mechanism: Bridging Evolutionary Social Sciences & Cultural Evolution
2025-02-10 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | 352 Haines Hall
Lineage Fitness Theory and the Lineage Manipulation and Mutualism Mechanism: Bridging Evolutionary Social Sciences & Cultural Evolution
Ryan Nichols
Department of Philosophy, California State University Fullerton
Lineage fitness theory aims to improve integration of cultural evolution with evolutionary psychological and social sciences by explaining the onset and maintenance of key traditions as products of gene-culture co-evolutionary selection of a mechanism. The lineage fitness hypothesis is deduced from inclusive fitness theory, corresponding middle-level evolutionary hypotheses, and stated assumptions pertaining to cumulative culture. The lineage manipulation and mutualism mechanism refers to the causal processes by which ancestors exploited intra-lineage cumulative cultural traditions to marginally raise their fitness by partially controlling inputs to evolved psychological modules of descendants. This caused increases in rates of co-descendant survival, in welfare tradeoff ratio amongst distant co-descendants, and led to manipulation of mating preferences and behaviors of co-descendants. Unique predictions of this theory that are not entailed by kin selection theory are identified. The posterior probability of this theory is raised by attention to studies demonstrating effects of cultural traditions on patrilineal investment, and by a case study of Han Chinese culture and genomics. A Bayesian argument noting several limitations concludes the discussion by affirming (only) that the lineage fitness hypothesis merits further investigation by experts.

Mike Frank - Bridging the data gap between children and AI models
2025-02-24 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Bridging the data gap between children and AI models
Mike Frank

Benjamin Scott Crocker Professor of Human Biology, Stanford University

Large language and language-vision models show intriguing emergent behaviors, yet they receive at least three to four – and sometimes as much as six – orders of magnitude more language data than human children. What accounts for this vast difference in sample efficiency? I will describe steps towards a paradigm in which we can address this question. In particular, I’ll discuss the use of child language and egocentric video data for model training, and the use of developmental data for model evaluation. This paradigm provides a model-based framework for exploring the nature of children’s early language learning.

Daniel L. Bowling - Music and Health: Biological Foundations and Applications *Rescheduled from 1/13/25*
2025-03-03 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Music and Health: Biological Foundations and Applications
Daniel L. Bowling
Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA)
Every day, hundreds of millions of people turn to music to regulate their mood, take pleasure, and socialize. These effects apply directly to core dimensions of mental health, including affect, reward, and social functioning. This correspondence is attracting attention from public and private investors (e.g., the National Institutes of Health and Universal Music Group). The evidence at hand includes hundreds of controlled trials examining music therapies, meta-analyses of which show clinically significant effects across a broad range of major functional disorders (e.g., of mood, anxiety, sociality, psychosis, and dementia). Building on this success, a variety of new and developing music-based treatments are being sold and tested in support of health and wellness. In this talk, I will present our growing understanding of music’s underlying biology alongside recent work to combine music neuroscience, therapy, composition, and technology towards new applications designed to increase treatment access and biomedical integration.

Tage Rai - Incentivized punishers and moralistic offenders destabilize cooperation
2025-03-10 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Incentivized punishers and moralistic offenders destabilize cooperation
Tage Rai
Assistant Professor
Rady School of Management
University of California, San Diego
Punishment is classically theorized to be essential for the evolution of cooperation in human societies and is the primary means by which states attempt to directly reduce crime. Yet, empirically, punishment is often ineffective at bringing about its desired changes in behavior. In this talk, I describe a series of papers from my lab that investigate moral motivation and signaling dynamics between punishers and offenders that reduce the effectiveness of punishment and destabilize cooperation. These studies draw on economic games, secondary analyses of crime, and vignette study methods, and are conducted with participants from general and criminalized populations. I then revisit the question of why we punish, whether it ever makes sense, and what our alternatives are.

Hillard Kaplan - An evolutionary-physiological model of human energy management and the emergence of novel non-communicable diseases
2025-03-31 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
An evolutionary-physiological model of human energy management and the emergence of novel non-communicable diseases
Hillard Kaplan
Professor, Anthropology, University of New Mexico
Research Affiliate, Economic Science Institute, Chapman University
This talk presents recent findings obtained with Tsimane and Moseten Native South Americans showing that they 1) engage in high levels of physical activity, and have a high burden of infectious disease and high fertility rates; 2) have a very low prevalence of heart disease and dementia; 3) have slower rates of brain volume loss with age than U.S. and European populations; and 4) evidence a curvilinear relationship of BMI and non-HDL cholesterol with brain volume. Based on those results, I propose a theoretical model of the evolved human energy management system, focusing on the regulation and use of macronutrients in supporting physical activity, brain function, immunity, and reproduction. This is followed by a quantitative model that examines how natural selection would act on exogenous changes in energy supply and expenditure. The final part of the talk utilizes the model to explore how recent rapid changes in energy supply, physical activity, pathogen burden and reproduction result in increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, dementia, and cancer.

Ny Vasil - Generic generalizations within and across contexts
2025-04-14 12:00 - 13:30 | 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. This talk brings together ideas from psychology, philosophy and linguistics to argue that stability of the described relationship – the extent to which it holds across various contexts, real or hypothetical – plays an important role in people’s endorsement of generic generalizations about natural and social kinds, and about causal relationships in these domains. In a series of empirical studies, we explore how agents navigate the world composed of both broad and narrow patterns, how the search for robust non-accidental regularities is flexibly adapted to handle “sociocultural bubbles” and other exceptions to universality, and how this capacity develops. In conclusion, I will discuss how the proposed account coheres with the psychological functions of generalizations.

Katrine Whiteson - May the Fiber Be with You: Gut Microbiomes from a remote Amazon village to the undergraduate lab
2025-04-28 12:00 - 13:30 | 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 context of industrialization. Over the past century, global diets have shifted dramatically, with increased consumption of processed foods and a steep decline in dietary fiber intake. These changes have left our colons depleted of critical substrates that fuel gut microbial communities, with potential consequences for immune function, metabolic health, and chronic disease risk.
To explore what a less industrialized microbiome might look like, we studied the gut, oral, and fermented food microbiomes of women and children from 28 households in Conambo, a remote Indigenous community along the Conambo River in the Ecuadorian Amazon. This community is largely isolated from urban infrastructure, with minimal exposure to processed foods or modern medical care. Microbiome profiles from Conambo participants revealed high diversity and a dominance of microbial taxa such as Prevotellaceae.
We also analyzed chicha, a traditional fermented manioc beverage prepared by mastication of boiled cassava tubers. Our findings revealed microbial succession during fermentation and close taxonomic overlaps with oral and gut microbiota—underscoring the intimate links between diet, tradition, and microbial transmission. Within Conambo, household co-residence emerged as a strong driver of microbiome similarity across fecal, saliva, and chicha samples.
Finally, we contextualized the Conambo microbiomes by comparing them to global reference datasets, including UC Irvine undergraduates participating in dietary fiber intervention studies. Together, these datasets reveal how environmental exposure, diet, and social structure shape the human microbiome—and offer a lens into both human microbial history and the future of microbiome-informed health.

Annie E. Wertz - How infants learn to eat plants (and why they may not want to)
2025-05-12 12:00 - 13:30 | 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 survive and the organismic design of plants and animals have been tightly interwoven in intricate ways over evolutionary time. Humans are no exception. Plants have been a foundational component of human diets across evolutionary time, yet many plants can be toxic or even fatal if ingested. In this talk, I will present research exploring the cognitive adaptations human infants use to negotiate this paradox and safely learn which plants they can eat.

Erin Riley - Roadside primates: Balancing risks and rewards in anthropogenic environments
2025-06-02 12:00 - 13:30 | 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 agricultural crops or provisioned foods, but they also must deal with potential negative outcomes from the presence of humans and their activities. The complexity of these human-primate interfaces necessitates the use of interdisciplinary approaches that draw from both the natural and social sciences. In this talk, I will discuss my research on the human-macaque interface in Sulawesi, Indonesia, highlighting the mixed methods approaches my colleagues and I are using to examine how macaques and people are co-adapting to ever-expanding shared landscapes.

Stephan Kaufhold, UCSD. Title: Situated Simian Minds: Why Context Matters for Modeling Primate Behavior
2025-09-29 12:00 - 13:30 | 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 study examines food transfers in socially housed orangutans. We found that transfer strategies (e.g., taking, co-feeding, requesting) are not independent events, but dynamically calibrated by preceding interactions within dyads.
The second study investigates social tolerance in Japanese macaques, using a hybrid computer vision approach to quantify how monkeys socially navigate in the presence of food resources. Macaques maintained greater-than-chance distances from conspecifics when entering a food-baited circle inside their enclosures. This was especially evident in subordinate males, who took more circuitous routes and maximized their distance from others when approaching the resource in the presence of alpha males. Our results show how macaques’ movement trajectories are socially situated and balance social risk with resource access.
I conclude by discussing how a relational, situated approach is particularly important when designing machine learning datasets in primate research. By grounding models in function and context, we can advance our understanding of primate behavior and communication and avoid pitfalls of projecting human frameworks onto other species.
For more about Stephan’s work see his website:
https://www.stephankaufhold.com/
Zoom link for those unable to attend in person:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Stacy Rosenbaum (Univ. Michigan) - "The long arm of “childhood:” what can other primates teach us about the early life origins of aging and resiliency?"
2025-10-20 12:00 - 13:30 | 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 suggests that species-level differences may also be considerable. In this talk, I present longitudinal data from wild savannah baboons and mountain gorillas showing that similar forms of early life adversity can have dramatically different outcomes depending on the species. I explore the socioecological factors that may drive this variation and discuss how these insights can inform our broader understanding of aging and resilience in primates, including humans.

Change of plans: Our speaker will not be able to attend in person and will give her talk via Zoom.
Enrolled students are still expected to attend in person to watch the zoom presentation together (in 352 Haines Hall). We will still have individual meetings between the speaker and students.
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Richard Karban (UC-Davis) - Plant Communication and Individual Personalities
2025-11-03 12:00 - 13:30 | 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 each other with respect to their risk of being attacked by insect herbivores has been more controversial. We have found that sagebrush plants that are attacked by insects or mechanically damaged emit volatiles. Neighboring sagebrush plants sense these volatiles and increase their resistance to herbivory. Volatiles are required for this eavesdropping between individuals and between branches on a single individual. In the field, this eavesdropping increased the survival of seedlings and the production of flowers and new shoots for older plants. Individual plants showed relatively stable tendencies in their emission of active cues and also in their responses to cues. In other words, they showed tendencies that were consistent over time and also consistent across different situations, i.e., they exhibited personalities. For example, individuals that were good receivers were also good emitters. Recognizing that plants communicate via volatile cues expands our view of the sophisticated behaviors that plants are capable of. It may also allow us to design more effective pest management strategies. Recognizing that plants have individual personalities forces us to think about their past experiences and to consider correlations between behaviors.

Zoom link for those unable to attend in person:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Bret Beheim, MPI-EVAN - "Planck's Principle, Price's Theorem and the Forces of Cultural Evolution" (via Zoom)
2025-11-17 12:00 - 13:30 | 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 Principle (as it has come to be known) is a key explanatory force, it has major implications for the study of cultural evolution, which has instead traditionally focused on the role of social and individual learning (as people ‘see the light’). Although there have been several projects focusing on the role of demographic turnover in cultural evolution, evidence to date has been mixed and equivocal. A key theoretical limitation has been the lack of a principled way to compare the relative strength of different forces of cultural evolution.
To solve this problem, we adapt the method of *evolutionary decomposition* pioneered in mathematical demography, which applies Price’s Theorem to trajectories of phenotypic change. Using a novel derivation of this approach tailored to historical archives of creative human culture, we can measure (for the first time) the relatively explanatory strength of three categories of force in cultural evolution, namely, the entrances of new cohorts, the process of attrition, and the “changiness” of individuals over the course of their creative careers. Taking this to a variety of high-resolution longitudinal datasets, including song lyrics, board game strategies, and stylistic themes in European literature and musical compositions, we find strong evidence for the importance of population turnover and the entrance of new cohorts with splashy, disruptive ideas. Rather than Planck’s formulation of cultural change “one funeral at a time”, however, we find instead many circumstances where cultural change occurs “one birth at a time”. We also find systematic differences in the relative strength of these three categories of force, with some systems being driven by social learning and strategic adoption dynamics consistent with the canonical models of social learning, while others being mostly characterized by the slower process of demographic replacement. Our results demonstrate the value of an expanded, force-centric approach to studying long-term cultural change.
Zoom link:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Katie Sayre, UCSB - Title: "Loneliness and health: insights from the Tsimane Health and Life History Project"
2025-12-01 12:00 - 13:30 | 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 that it may be a relatively recent phenomenon, tied to capitalism and the market economy. Recent meta-analyses, however, suggest that adults in lower- and middle-income countries also experience loneliness, despite living in socially embedded contexts. Still, most research on loneliness and its behavioral and health correlates focuses primarily on those people living in higher-income countries. In this talk, I will discuss recent work examining loneliness, the social environment, and health in Tsimane and Moseten forager-horticulturalists of Bolivia. This work challenges the concept that loneliness necessarily results from processes of the market economy, and suggests that loneliness is not confined to industrialized settings but likely represents a shared aspect of human experience.
Zoom link for those unable to attend in person:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Delaney Knorr, Duke University -- Title: Evolutionary Constraints on Human Pregnancy: How Social Environments and Energetic Limits Shape Maternal-Fetal Health
2026-01-05 12:00 - 13:30 | 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., I show how neighborhood context, discrimination, and sociopolitical stress shape maternal psychological distress, and how support from allomothers buffers these effects. I then present evidence from immunological and placental biology indicating that maternal stress is linked to reductions in regulatory T cells and placental extracellular vesicles, revealing potential pathways through which social experience influences maternal-fetal communication and immune tolerance. Finally, I discuss findings from a project measuring total energy expenditure in pregnancy using doubly labeled water to test whether physical activity and psychosocial stress push gestation toward a metabolic ceiling. Together, this work highlights how social environments and energetic constraints jointly structure maternal-fetal trade-offs.
Zoom link for those unable to attend in person:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Katie Starkweather, UCSB. Title: Climate Change, Women's Work, and Child Health in Bangladeshi Shodagor Communities
2026-01-26 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
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 food prices, and increased disease transmission, as well as myriad other issues. In some cases, women’s work may exacerbate challenges, while in others it can buffer them, and evolutionary theory provides a useful framework for understanding some of these nuanced differences. Traditionally boat-dwelling, semi-nomadic Shodagor fisher-trader communities in rural Bangladesh are facing increasing exposure to extreme flooding and extreme heat. In my talk, I will discuss recent studies examining the impacts of extreme weather on Shodagor children’s growth and nutritional outcomes. I will highlight the critical role that women’s work plays in shaping these outcomes, including how work and breastfeeding practices interact in the face of extreme weather to influence child health. Finally, I will discuss likely future implications for child growth and nutrition of continued increasing extreme weather events for Shodagor communities, in Bangladesh, and across the Global South.
https://kathrinestarkweather.com/
Zoom link:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Amy Non, Dept of Anthropology, UCSD. Title: Novel markers of stress in early life: sex ratios, preterm births, and milk miRNAs. Via Zoom
2026-02-09 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
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, sex ratios (male births/total live births) have been altered among mammals birthing in adverse environments, a theory termed the Trivers-Willard Hypothesis. Shifting sex ratios may be an adaptive strategy that also applies to humans, which have shown to favor female offspring among populations birthing in poor conditions, given their more reliable chance of reproductive success. After birth, lactation is another sensitive period during which mothers transmit nutrition, hormones, and other bioactive molecules to their offspring, which may help shape strategies for growth and development. MicroRNAs are small noncoding segments of RNA that regulate gene expression and are highly abundant in milk. In this talk, I will discuss research from my lab group on the influence of the early COVID-19 pandemic, a nationwide stressor, on patterns of preterm births in the U.S. and sex ratios in the U.S. and Ireland. Additionally, I will discuss the value of studying exosomal microRNAs in human milk as a novel biomarker of stress and mood, potentially transmitting signals to offspring about maternal environmental conditions.
Zoom link:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Greg Grether, EEB, UCLA, Title: Behavioral interference between species
2026-02-23 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
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 can strongly influence whether species are able to coexist at all, and if they do, how they subsequently evolve in response to one another through natural selection. Such interactions were likely part of human evolutionary history and may even help explain why Homo sapiens is the sole surviving species in the genus Homo. In this talk, however, I focus on what we know with greater certainty about behavioral interference in other animals. Why does behavioral interference persist if it is costly at the population level? How does it influence species’ geographic ranges, the spread of invasive species, or the persistence of endangered species? What evidence do we have that behavioral interference drives evolutionary change? Drawing on examples from across the literature as well as from my own research, I will address these questions and strive to offer a balanced perspective on the causes and consequences of behavioral interference.
Zoom link for those attending remotely:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Olympia Campbell, Institute for Advanced Studies, Toulouse. Title: Cousin marriage, women’s welfare, and accelerated family formation
2026-03-09 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
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 autonomy, suppressing help-seeking. Using demographic data from ~40,000 women across Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan, and Turkey, I show that cousin-married women report significantly lower levels of both physical intimate partner violence and coercive control than women in non-consanguineous unions.
In the second half, I examine whether cousin marriage accelerates family formation by reducing search and transaction costs. Marrying kin may eliminate protracted spouse searches and simplify negotiations, lowering age at first marriage. Using demographic data from the same four countries I test whether cousin marriage reduces age at marriage and increases completed fertility. A fertility advantage could offset genetic costs of inbreeding, potentially explaining the evolutionary persistence of consanguineous marriage.

Zoom link:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Joan Silk, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, ASU. Title: New Perspectives on Male Parenting in Primates: Insights from Baboons
2026-03-30 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
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 of the evolution of this suite of traits is problematic because the most recent common ancestor of humans and the genus Pan probably did not share any of these features. However, a growing body of data from studies of living primates suggest that there may be multiple pathways to the evolution of male paternal care and extended breeding bonds, and provide a broader foundation for thinking about the evolution of human reproductive strategies. My research group has been exploring the trade-offs between mating and parenting effort for male olive baboons, a species with relatively high male reproductive skew and a polygynadrous mating system. Our data provide evidence of behavioural trade-offs between mating effort and parenting effort for males, changes in allocation of mating and parenting effort across the life course, and the existence of enduring reproductive bonds. I will describe these data and their implications for understanding the evolution of the unusual set of traits that characterize our own species.
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Dr. Eva Jablonka, Professor emerita, Tel-Aviv University: The Evolution of Animal Consciousness. Hosted by the UCLA Dept. of Philosophy
2026-04-10 16:00 - 18:00 | Royce Hall, 10745 Dickson Plaza, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
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 were shown by contrastive experiments (comparing conscious and non-conscious perception) to require consciousness is a good starting point for the search for consciousness markers in non-human animals. However, the choice of contrastive experiments that are deemed relevant for animals is theory-dependent. I present an evolutionary approach suggesting that consciousness is the outcome of the evolution of a complex form of associative learning (unlimited associative learning, UAL), and that the cognitive architecture that evolved to enable this kind of learning is the architecture of minimal consciousness. This theory provides a framework for observational and experimental studies in animals and has many testable predictions. I end by discussing the implications of the evolutionary approach for consciousness studies and for research in evolutionary biology.

Royce Hall 306
RSVP necessary:

“The Evolution of Animal Consciousness” – Eva Jablonka, Prof. Emerita, Tel Aviv University

Eva Jablonka, Prof. Emerita, Tel Aviv Univ.: Evolutionary Theory and the Unification of Life Sciences in the 21st Century. Frank Marlowe Memorial lecture.
2026-04-13 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Abstract: I argue that the changes in our current view of evolutionary theory are leading to a new unification of life-sciences, which is occurring, seemingly paradoxically, within the context of their increased specialization and fracturing. Unlike the modern evolutionary synthesis of the 20th century (the MS) which claimed that selection is the only direction-giving process in evolution, the current synthesis incorporates not only new biological domains but also processes that were excluded by the MS. I consider two aspects of this unification: the first is the synthesis between development and heredity, which involves enrichment of both notions and is leading to important changes in our view of evolution, discussed within the framework of the extended evolutionary synthesis (EES). The second aspect is the study of mental processes stemming from research into the evolutionary origins and effects of consciousness. I argue that these developments enable the construction of a unifying evolutionary framework for the expanding domain of 21st century life sciences, which is becoming based on broader and richer views of heredity, adaptation and cognition.
Zoom link:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

There will also be an art exhibit and reception by Anna Zeligowska featuring the art from Eva Jablnoka’s books from 5:30-7PM in Dodd 321. Food will be served at that evening event and members of the BEC community are welcome.

Frank Marlowe Memorial Lecturer: Mike Gurven, Anthropology, UCSB. Title: A Natural History of Human Longevity.
2026-04-20 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Abstract:
The evolution of human longevity still remains a curious puzzle. Here I provide some new perspectives on the why and how of longevity over the course of human evolution, relying on the anthropological study of subsistence societies as an imperfect lens for gaining insight. I argue that our evolved human lifespan is about seven decades, and that the multifaceted contributions of middle-to-older aged adults is part of the reason why. I combine ethnographic, demographic and biomedical studies to shed light on the timing and significance of the transition from “asset” to “burden” in late adulthood, with implications for navigating the global Gray Wave of population aging.
Zoom link:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Morgan Tingley, EEB, UCLA: "To move, or not to move? How species respond to a warming climate"
2026-05-04 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Abstract: When we contemplate how biodiversity is changing, we often focus on the species we have lost entirely. But while we have yet to lose a single bird species to our rapidly changing climate, birds and other creatures are currently adapting and responding in myriad ways. Across the world, species are shifting their geographic distributions, shifting the timing of life history events, and even shifting their body shapes and sizes. Integrating field research and citizen science over decades to centuries, the research presented in this talk demonstrates the complex ways that species are responding to a changing climate, as well as the options that humans have to help species cope with an increasingly dynamic earth system.
Zoom link:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Dr. Kim Zhu: Multi-Omic Investigations of Convergent Human Adaptations to High-Altitude Hypoxia in the Himalayas and Andes
2026-05-18 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Abstract: A long-standing goal within the field of evolutionary genomics has been to understand how genomic and phenotypic differences between human populations arise. High-altitude environments offer a natural experiment to study this question, as these environments impose a number of selective pressures, the most severe of which is high-altitude hypoxia. Human populations residing across the Andean Altiplano, Tibetan Plateau, and Ethiopian Highlands represent three separate replications of this natural experiment, each displaying a unique suite of high-altitude adaptive phenotypes. This talk explores how multi-omic methods can be leveraged to uncover signatures of natural selection and developmental adaptation that have shaped the adaptive phenotypes displayed among high-altitude residing Andean and Himalayan populations. Ultimately, this work highlights how adaptive processes can act across evolutionary and developmental timescales to shape the shared and distinguishing features observed between human populations.
Zoom link:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Ashley Mensing, Dept of Anthropology, UCLA. Title: Early life adversity and life history correlates in wild white-faced capuchins: physiological mechanisms and fitness outcomes
2026-06-01 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Abstract:
Organisms 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.
I 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.
This talk will be presented via Zoom:
https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 943 0873 0584
Passcode: [REDACTED]
