Erol Akcay: University of Tennessee National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS)There is extensive work on the evolutionary causes of social behaviors, but integration of this theory with the proximate mechanisms of behavior has lagged behind. Here, I will present a new modeling approach to achieve such integration. The model rests on goal-oriented motivations, […]

Thomas Flamson: Santa Monica College Department of Earth Science / UCLA Department of AnthropologyThe Encryption Theory of Humor proposes that humor evolved as a means of signaling similarity in locally variable personal features in order to facilitate assortment with the most compatible peers within the local group. It claims that a necessary component of humorous […]

Robert Wayne: UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary BiologyThe domestic dog is one of our most remarkable inventions. The behavioral and functional diversity of the dog far surpasses that of its wild progenitor, the gray wolf. Similarly, in size and proportion, dogs exceed the diversity of the entire carnivore order. The dog genome project and […]

James Holland Jones: Stanford University Department of AnthropologyInteraction networks shaped by social processes constitute the substrate on which various phenomena of interest to evolutionary anthropologists and human biologists occur. Examples of such phenomena include epidemics, diffusion of ideas or information, and the exertion of social and political influence. Understanding the structure of network formation is […]

Michael Alvard: Texas A&M University Department of AnthropologyThe human ability to form large, coordinated groups is among our most impressive social adaptation. Larger groups facilitate synergistic economies of scale for cooperative breeding, economic tasks like group hunting, and success in conflict with other groups. In many organisms, genetic relationships provide the structure for sociality to […]

Dominic Johnson: University of Edinburgh Reader in Politics & International RelationsA recent explosion of work suggests a key role for human physiology and evolutionary psychology in understanding political behaviour, from genes to hormones to cognition. However, the entire notion of an evolutionary basis for human behavior meets a traditional skepticism in the social sciences, and […]

Parry Clarke: UC Davis Department of AnthropologyClassic sexual selection theory, exemplified by the work of Bateman and Trivers, has played and continues to play a central role in the study of primate mating systems. As a result, most theorizing within the field is premised on the assumption that males have been selected to maximize competitive […]

Jennifer Smith: UCLA Center for Society & Genetics and Department of Ecology and Evolutionary BiologyCooperation is pervasive in the societies of humans and other animals, yet the current body of evolutionary theory often fails to fully explain its persistence. Because spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) live in complex societies, this species provides an interesting opportunity to […]

Christophe Boesch: Director of the Department of Primatology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary AnthropologyFieldwork studies have revealed with much detail the sophisticated levels of cooperation and altruism in the social domain seen in many animal species. Now, recently some psychologists and economists are loudly claiming that cooperation and altruism are uniquely human abilities. […]

Moshe Hoffman: UCSD Rady School of ManagementWe review the evidence regarding a biological basis for sex differences in risk aversion and competitiveness. We present the relevant literature in evolutionary theory, and animal behavior, endocrinology and neuroscience, as well as the literature relating human risk aversion and competitiveness to handedness, 2D:4D (a proxy of prenatal testosterone […]