Bridget Callaghan - Intergenerational impacts of adversity on mind-body health: pathways through interoception and the gut-brain axis
2023-10-23 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | 352 Haines Hall
Intergenerational impacts of adversity on mind-body health – pathways through interoception and the gut-brain axis
Bridget Callaghan
Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, UCLA
Children’s early experiences with caregivers impact their mental and physical health across the lifespan. Such early caregiving experiences can become biologically and psychologically embedded within an individual, contributing to intergenerational transmission of adversity. My research program investigates the neurobiological mechanisms via which early caregiving experiences impact children’s mental and physical health, and how those experiences may be transmitted to impact future generations. I will present data from several studies demonstrating how early life adversity gets ‘under the skin’ to influence children’s emotional health and physical health, paying particular attention to gastrointestinal distress, which is tightly connected to emotional wellbeing. Zooming in on the gastrointestinal and oral microbiomes, I will show how adversity impacts biological systems tied to emotional and physical wellbeing. Finally, I will show that mind-body adaptations to the state of pregnancy, through changing interoception, may be one pathway through which experiences of adversity are perpetuated across generations.

Katie Karlsgodt - Reward and Cognitive Function in Adolescent Psychopathology
2023-10-30 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Reward and Cognitive Function in Adolescent Psychopathology
Katie Karlsgodt
UCLA Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry
Adolescence is a time when exploration, and even risk-taking, can be considered an adaptive part of the typical developmental experience. This period of enhanced risk-taking allows for new learning, particularly about the social world, and is a critical part of establishing independence. Risk-taking is a complex behavior, often considered to rely on many factors, including reward sensitivity and reward behaviors, response to punishment, and executive function skills that allow the balancing of competing factors and the selection of choices. However, in addition to being a time of exploration and independence, adolescence is also the period of onset for many psychological disorders including schizophrenia and depression. Many such disorders include alterations in both reward and executive function, which has the potential to impact learning and exploration during this time, with ultimate effects on social function, and long term daily life function. In this talk, I will address the existing literature in this area, recent relevant work from my lab on reward function, adolescence, and psychopathology, and future directions.

Michael Wells - Exploration of human genetic and phenotypic diversity through cell villages
2023-11-06 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Exploration of human genetic and phenotypic diversity through cell villages
Michael Wells
Assistant Professor, UCLA Department of Human Genetics
Human genome variation contributes to diversity in neurodevelopmental outcomes and vulnerabilities; recognizing the underlying molecular and cellular mechanisms will require scalable approaches. Here, I will describe a ‘‘cell village’’ experimental platform we used to analyze genetic, molecular, and phenotypic heterogeneity across neural progenitor cells from 44 human donors cultured in a shared in vitro environment using algorithms (Dropulation and Census-seq) to assign cells and phenotypes to individual donors. Through rapid induction of human stem cell-derived neural progenitor cells, measurements of natural genetic variation, and CRISPR-Cas9 genetic perturbations, we identified a common variant that regulates antiviral IFITM3 expression and explains most inter-individual variation in susceptibility to the Zika virus. We also detected expression QTLs corresponding to GWAS loci for brain traits and discovered novel disease-relevant regulators of progenitor proliferation and differentiation such as CACHD1. The village approach provides scalable ways to elucidate the effects of genes and genetic variation on cellular phenotypes, and can help elucidate the mechanisms guiding brain development and associated diseases.

Zarin Machanda - Social aging in wild chimpanzees
2023-11-13 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Social aging in wild chimpanzees
Zarin Machanda
Tufts University, Departments of Anthropology and Biology
Humans are living longer lives than ever before and so it is critical to understand the process of aging. It has become increasingly recognized that successful aging is not just about physical health but also about our social lives. Chimpanzees are our closest living relative and lead long and complex lives making them an ideal model to better understand our own patterns of social aging. In this talk, Dr. Machanda will discuss the patterns of social aging in wild chimpanzees from her decades-long research project studying the Kanyawara chimpanzees living in Kibale National Park, Uganda.

Theo Samore - Traditionalism, pathogen avoidance, and competing tradeoffs during a global pandemic
2023-11-27 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Traditionalism, pathogen avoidance, and competing tradeoffs during a global pandemic
Theo Samore
University of Otago
Individuals vary in the extent to which they embrace their society’s traditions, as well as in the perception of threats as salient and necessitating mitigation. Traditionalism and threat sensitivity may be linked if—over evolutionary time—traditions offered avenues for reliably addressing threats, either through instrumental and/or ritual and cooperative benefits. Alternatively, if traditionalists are attuned to group-destabilizing threats, they may also exhibit greater threat sensitivity in certain domains. These possibilities – which are not mutually exclusive – suggest that greater traditionalism may associate with stronger mitigating responses toward some threats. However, threat-avoidance motivations can conflict with competing priorities and epistemic commitments in the real world. The COVID-19 pandemic represented a moment in time in which people across the world undertook costly threat-mitigating behaviors, providing an important test of the traditionalism-threat avoidance relationship under complex real-world conditions. We investigated the relationship between COVID-19 precautions, traditionalism, and perceptions of competing tradeoffs in both the U.S. and a large 27-country cross-cultural sample. Results indicated that, across study sites, traditionalism tended to positively correlate with behaviors intended to mitigate the threat of COVID-19. Further, despite possible epistemic conflict between religion and science, individuals tended to report engaging in both scientifically and religiously rooted precautions. Nevertheless, at some study sites, the relationship between public health precautions and traditionalism was suppressed by competing priorities, such as lower trust in scientists and greater concerns about personal liberties.

Nikhil Chaudhary - Hunter-gatherers, evolutionary mismatch and mental disorder
2023-12-04 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Hunter-gatherers, evolutionary mismatch and mental disorder
Nikhil Chaudhary
Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, University of Cambridge
*Note: This speaker will be remote; However, we will still be meeting in Haines 352 to watch the talk and conduct the Q&A.
Humans lived as hunter-gatherers for the vast majority of our evolutionary history, therefore it has been proposed that aspects of our psychology may be adapted to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. There are several assumptions in this proposal, however, research with contemporary hunter-gatherers can offer a useful starting point for exploring the potential for evolutionary mismatch—when an organism faces conditions that differ from those that some trait of the organism is adapted to, resulting in pathology or maladaptation. Drawing on my fieldwork and previous research, I will discuss how discordances between the social organisation of hunter-gatherers and WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) societies may affect vulnerability to mental disorders in the latter. I will pay particularly attention to differences in residence patterns, hierarchical structures, and social networks. I will also discuss differences in childcare strategies and their implications for psychological development.

Emily Lindsey - Dawn of the Anthropocene: How humans in a warming climate drove Pleistocene mammal extinctions and re-shaped California’s landscapes
2024-01-22 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Dawn of the Anthropocene: How humans in a warming climate drove Pleistocene mammal extinctions and re-shaped California’s landscapes
Emily Lindsey
Tar Pits/UCLA

The relative roles late-Quaternary climate changes and human actions played in the extinction of most of the world’s large mammals at the end of the Ice Age have been long-debated. One key challenge is that the fossil record in most regions is too poorly-constrained to precisely pinpoint the disappearance times of different species and align these with environmental and anthropogenic phenomena. In this talk, I will describe how a large-scale, interdisciplinary effort brought together several remarkable records from southern California to unveil a regional story of fire, extinction, and ecosystem state shift. This discovery has significant implications for global megafaunal extinctions research as well as modern conservation efforts.

Elsa Ordway - Insights from the tropics: a social-ecological systems approach to understanding climate change
2024-01-29 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Insights from the tropics: a social-ecological systems approach to understanding climate change
Elsa Ordway
UCLA
The tropics are experiencing dramatic changes as a result of climate change and land-use change. Shifts in carbon flux dynamics, water cycling, and species composition are resulting in feedbacks with globally important consequences. However, tropical forests are not a monolith. They vary enormously in terms of species diversity, climate, soils, human interactions, and much more. As a result, tropical forest ecosystems are already beginning to show evidence of distinct responses to climate and land-use change. Yet, these differences remain highly uncertain and poorly understood. An integrated social-ecological systems approach is critical for understanding drivers of and responses to change, as well as for identifying solutions.

Jazlyn Mooney - On the Number of Genealogical Ancestors: Tracing to the Source Groups of an Admixed Population
2024-02-05 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
On the Number of Genealogical Ancestors: Tracing to the Source Groups of an Admixed Population
Jazlyn Mooney
USC
In genetically admixed populations, admixed individuals possess ancestry from multiple source groups. Studies of human genetic admixture frequently estimate ancestry components corresponding to fractions of individual genomes that trace to specific ancestral populations. However, the same numerical ancestry fraction can represent a wide array of admixture scenarios. Using a mechanistic model of admixture, we characterize admixture genealogically: how many distinct ancestors from the source populations does the admixture represent? We consider African Americans, for whom continent-level estimates produce a 75-85% value for African ancestry on average and 15-25% for European ancestry. Genetic studies together with key features of African-American demographic history suggest ranges for model parameters. Using the model, we infer that if genealogical lineages of a random African American born during 1960-1965 are traced back until they reach members of source populations, the expected number of genealogical lines terminating with African individuals is 314, and the expected number terminating in Europeans is 51. Across discrete generations, the peak number of African genealogical ancestors occurs for birth cohorts from the early 1700s. The probability exceeds 50% that at least one European ancestor was born more recently than 1835. Our genealogical perspective can contribute to further understanding the admixture processes that underlie admixed populations. For African Americans, the results provide insight both on how many of the ancestors of a typical African American might have been forcibly displaced in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and on how many separate European admixture events might exist in a typical African-American genealogy.

Eduardo Amorim - How Past Pandemics Shaped the Evolution of Human Immunity – Lessons from Ancient Genomes
2024-02-12 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
How Past Pandemics Shaped the Evolution of Human Immunity – Lessons from Ancient
Genomes
Eduardo Amorim
Cal State Northridge
Pathogen exposure has played a pivotal role in shaping human evolution. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) reveal that the genetic predisposition to infections arises from the contribution of thousands of loci across the genome, indicating a polygenic mode of inheritance. At California State University Northridge, our research lab utilizes ancient DNA (aDNA) data to investigate the evolution of polygenic traits in humans, focusing on phenotypes related to immunity and adaptation to extreme environmental conditions. In this presentation, I will explore how past epidemics shaped the genetic makeup of our ancestors, impacting various biological pathways relevant to human health. While addressing the limitations of our methods, I will emphasize the growing potential of paleogenomics, employing time-series genetic data built with aDNA to enhance our understanding of human adaptation and the evolution of polygenic traits. The talk will conclude with a brief overview of other ongoing projects in our lab, including the study of high-altitude adaptation and the coevolution of the human host and the oral microbiome.

Michael Campbell - The effect of population history on patterns of genetic diversity at the TAS2R bitter taste receptor genes in West Central and Central African populations
2024-02-26 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
The effect of population history on patterns of genetic diversity at the TAS2R bitter taste receptor genes in West Central and Central African populations
Michael Campbell
USC
Bitter taste perception is a highly variable trait in humans, and the ability to detect bitter compounds has been largely attributed to genetic variants in 25 bitter taste receptor (TAS2R) genes. Furthermore, bitter taste perception has been hypothesized to be a dietary adaptation in humans. However, few studies have characterized patterns of diversity and signatures of selection at the TAS2R genes in distinct African populations. Given the extensive genetic substructure and evidence for local adaptation in Africa, we hypothesized that Africans practicing diverse subsistence strategies could have distinct patterns of selection resulting from divergent diets. To test this hypothesis, we examined sequence variation at 22 bitter taste receptor genes in rainforest hunter-gatherers and Bantu-speaking agriculturalists from Cameroon. Here, we identified 353 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the TAS2R genes, 35 of which have never been previously described. We also observed striking signatures of positive selection, including unusually long haplotypes around alleles at the TAS2R genes. In addition, some of these signals of selection were shared between rainforest hunter-gatherers and Bantu-speaking agriculturalists. To better understand these results, we performed genomic genotyping in our African populations. Interestingly, we observed varying proportions of ancestry originating from Bantu-speakers in hunter-gatherers with the highest levels of admixture occurring in the Bakola population. These findings demonstrate that gene flow from neighboring agriculturalists has also shaped patterns of diversity in hunter-gatherers, including variation in the TAS2R genes. Overall, this research provides new insights into the evolution of biologically relevant bitter taste genes in highly understudied African populations.

Patricia Greenfield
2024-03-04 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Patricia Greenfield
Distinguished Professor, UCLA Department of Psychology
Associate, Harvard Department of Human Evolutionary Biology
A Theoretical and Empirical Approach to Cultural Evolution: Intergenerational Transmission, Cognition, and Creativity
For the theoretical approach, I will present my multilevel theory of ecological change, cultural evolution, and human development. For the empirical evidence, I will report findings from longitudinal study of a Zinacantec Maya community in Chiapas, Mexico over a span of 43 years. This research has explored the intergenerational transmission of weaving, cognitive development, and creativity in three generations of mothers and children. From Generation 1 to Generation 2, the main ecological change was the transition from subsistence agriculture to money and commerce. From Generation 2 to Generation 3, the main ecological change was from informal education at home to formal education at school. In the domain of intergenerational transmission, the first shift created more independent weaving learners; the second shift created more school-like transmission of weaving technique. Both ecological shifts moved cognition towards greater abstraction and creativity towards greater innovation. These ecological shifts also produced cultural losses: Fewer girls learning to weave on a backstrap loom, less detail-oriented visual representation, and the declining importance of traditional, community-wide woven patterns. The processes of cultural evolution identified in this Maya community are similar to cultural shifts going on in many communities around the world, communities have transitioned from subsistence ecologies to commercial, urbanized, and technologically more sophisticated environments.

Holly Dunsworth - To Save Humankind, Kill Off the Hero’s Journey of Human Evolution
2024-03-11 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
To Save Humankind, Kill Off the Hero’s Journey of Human Evolution
Holly Dunsworth
University of Rhode Island
In Narratives of Human Evolution, Misia Landau revealed that late 19th and early 20th century fathers of human evolutionary theory, including Charles Darwin, unconsciously conformed their stories to the key structural elements of Russian folktales. Dunsworth argues that the enduring habit—within science, academia, and throughout popular culture—of projecting a hero’s journey onto lineages that blend and weave across deep time is fundamental to the perpetuation of untrue patriarchal and racist reconstructions of human origins and human nature, which we continue to enact to our peril, and to the planet’s. In this presentation, Dunsworth breaks down the hero’s journey into its parts and compares them to contemporary human evolutionary biology. In the end, the hero’s journey does not triumph. This presentation is based on a chapter in Dunsworth’s upcoming book (Viking/Penguin, 2025).

David Reby - What can deer tell us about our voice? How sexual selection may have shaped human vocal diversity
2024-04-01 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
What can deer tell us about our voice? How sexual selection may have shaped human vocal diversity
David Reby
Professor of Ethology, Equipe de Neuro-Ethologie Sensorielle, Université Jean Monnet of Saint-Etienne

Many animal species use vocal communication, but humans are unique in the ability to control the vocal production of an incredible diversity of sounds, enabling us to exchange information of extreme complexity. In this talk, I will propose that sexual selection, which is responsible for the evolution of astonishing visual and auditory signals in many animal species, may have played a key role in the emergence of our vocal diversity. I will show that in a wide range of polygynous species, sexual selection has modified the vocal apparatus of males to support the exaggeration of body size conveyed by vocalizations. These modifications have in turn opened up the acoustic space along a male/female continuum, where low frequencies convey dominance and/or masculinity, and high frequencies convey subordination and/or femininity. I will suggest that this widening of the vocal space, which can be found in modern humans in the expression of gender in children’s and adults’ voices, may have favored the evolution of vocal control by allowing us to play along this frequency continuum to signal emotions and motivations. I will also suggest that size exaggeration may even have shaped the evolution of mechanisms necessary for the production and perception of vowels in speech.

Jazlyn Mooney - On the Number of Genealogical Ancestors: Tracing to the Source Groups of an Admixed Population
2024-04-08 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
On the Number of Genealogical Ancestors: Tracing to the Source Groups of an Admixed Population
Jazlyn Mooney
Dept. of Quantitative and Computational Biology, University of Southern California
In genetically admixed populations, admixed individuals possess ancestry from multiple source groups. Studies of human genetic admixture frequently estimate ancestry components corresponding to fractions of individual genomes that trace to specific ancestral populations. However, the same numerical ancestry fraction can represent a wide array of admixture scenarios. Using a mechanistic model of admixture, we characterize admixture genealogically: how many distinct ancestors from the source populations does the admixture represent? We consider African Americans, for whom continent-level estimates produce a 75-85% value for African ancestry on average and 15-25% for European ancestry. Genetic studies together with key features of African-American demographic history suggest ranges for model parameters. Using the model, we infer that if genealogical lineages of a random African American born during 1960-1965 are traced back until they reach members of source populations, the expected number of genealogical lines terminating with African individuals is 314, and the expected number terminating in Europeans is 51. Across discrete generations, the peak number of African genealogical ancestors occurs for birth cohorts from the early 1700s. The probability exceeds 50% that at least one European ancestor was born more recently than 1835. Our genealogical perspective can contribute to further understanding the admixture processes that underlie admixed populations. For African Americans, the results provide insight both on how many of the ancestors of a typical African American might have been forcibly displaced in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and on how many separate European admixture events might exist in a typical African-American genealogy.

Kelsey Jorgensen - Surviving the heights: Environmental adaptations and multispecies genetics in the Andes
2024-04-15 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Surviving the heights: Environmental adaptations and multispecies genetics in the Andes
Kelsey Jorgensen
Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Anthropology, UCLA
Human populations have thrived in the Peruvian Andes for thousands of years despite extreme environmental stressors of hypoxia, cold temperatures, and times of food scarcity. These evolutionary environmental pressures have shaped unique genetic adaptations and continue to influence health in human populations today. In this talk, I bridge genotype-phenotype to identify genetic variants in modern Peruvians linked to diet and high-altitude resulting from evolutionary environmental adaptation. In addition, I explore this intersection of biology, culture, and environment to infer ancient human migration patterns across the Andes in the absence of aDNA by using multispecies genetics.

Michael Greenfield - Rhythm coordination in animal species, including humans: Entrainment from bushcricket chorusing to the philharmonic orchestra
2024-04-22 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Rhythm coordination in animal species, including humans: Entrainment from bushcricket chorusing to the philharmonic orchestra.
Michael Greenfield
ENES Bioacoustics Research Lab, CRNL, University of Saint-Etienne, CNRS
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas
Repetitive cycles of an activity or state, generally known as rhythm, are ubiquitous in living organisms, occurring in all branches of the tree of life. In animal species rhythms play prominent roles in physiology and behavior, and they are commonly expressed as long-term (period > 12 h) cycles, entrained to recurring astronomical phenomena, at one end of the temporal spectrum, or as very short (< 10 s) ultradian cycles at the other. In behavior, ultradian rhythms often involve movement or the broadcast of communication signals, and in some species neighboring individuals coordinate their rhythms in time. Such coordination fascinates us because of its flawless precision and complexity, the horde of individuals that may participate, and the resulting crescendo of the communal display. But aesthetic sensibilities aside, coordinated rhythms pose major questions concerning mechanisms and evolution : How is coordination achieved, which individuals in a local population participate, why do neighbors bother to coordinate their activity and what is the phylogenetic distribution of these displays among animal taxa?
This seminar covers the diverse ways in which animals coordinate relatively fast behavioral rhythms. We concentrate on the coordination of rhythms expressed in sexual advertisement and social communication, as these tend to be conspicuous to observers and their parameters can normally be measured unambiguously. We begin with the various timing schemes found in rhythm coordination, noting the relative timing of the signaling by individual participants, how those participants tend to be arranged in space, and the signaling modalities used. From the receiver’s perspective, we ask who perceives the signals, where these potential receivers are located (whether within or outside of the coordinated group), and how receivers may respond to the group display. Because of moderate to extreme precision found in coordinated group displays, we pay special attention to the mechanisms with which individual signaling rhythms are aligned in different animal species. We show how an understanding of mechanism is critical for the next step : evaluating adaptive explanations for synchrony and other group coordinations. Although our survey of rhythm coordination among animals is certainly incomplete and probably reflects sampling bias favouring signals and species that are readily observed and that have been studied traditionally, some striking patterns emerge. Rhythm coordination of both moderate and high precision appears mostly among certain arthropods and ‘lower’ vertebrates in the chordates, but also in humans where synchronous coordination is central in music, dance and other group activities. We consider this curious, disjunct phylogenetic distribution, and specifically ask how and why strictly timed rhythmic synchrony operates in these very different organisms. Importantly, this comparative approach holds promise for unraveling the origins of human musicality.

Marcia Inhorn - Motherhood on ice: The mating gap and why women freeze their eggs
2024-04-29 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Motherhood on ice: The mating gap and why women freeze their eggs
Marcia Inhorn
Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University
Why are women freezing their eggs in record numbers? Contrary to media reports, which suggest that women’s career ambitions are the main determinant of women’s fertility postponement, women themselves offer different explanations for fertility preservation through egg freezing. The growing momentum toward this new reproductive technology masks an underlying but little discussed global reality—namely, a mating gap, in which women in the United States and more than half the world’s nations (including Australia) are outperforming men in higher education, resulting in the lack of eligible, educated, and equal partners with whom to pursue marriage and childbearing. Although egg freezing is touted for its “revolutionary” potential, it is a costly technological concession to growing gender inequalities, whereby educated women are “buying time” while experiencing reproductive partnership problems beyond their individual control.

Nelson Ting - Primate Extinction in the Anthropocene and the Tail of Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus
2024-05-20 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Primate Extinction in the Anthropocene and the Tail of Miss Waldron’s Red Colobus
Nelson Ting
Professor, Department of Anthropology & Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Oregon
There have been five mass extinction events in the history of Earth, and it is thought we are in the midst of a sixth. The consequences of this current event are far reaching, from losses in biodiversity and ecosystem services to damages in human food systems and global health security. Thus far, only one primate is thought to have recently gone extinct – Miss Waldron’s red colobus monkey. A dried tail procured from a hunter 25 years ago may provide clues as to how primates fit into this sixth extinction. Using results from whole genome sequencing from this specimen, I attempt to piece together the factors that drove this animal to extinction and discuss the implications for current conservation policy for primates. Based on these results and other lines of evidence, I argue that red colobus monkeys may play an important role in the conservation of tropical forests in Africa, and that holistic approaches to the protection of these animals will benefit both biodiversity and human livelihoods. Finally, to this end, I highlight recent activities my colleagues and I have undertaken as we implement recommendations from the IUCN Red Colobus Conservation Action Plan.

Kyle Wiley - Embodiment of Stress and Trauma in the Perinatal Period
2024-06-03 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Embodiment of Stress and Trauma in the Perinatal Period
Kyle Wiley
Recent UCLA post-doctoral researcher
The associations between adverse social experiences and poor health outcomes are well-documented and consistent across societies. My work interrogates intergenerational patterns of health disparities by combining methods and perspectives across biological anthropology, human biology, psychoneuroendocrinology and -immunology, and public health. In this talk, I will use data from several projects in the United States and Brazil to discuss how stress and trauma impact maternal and infant health and development in the perinatal period. Using a biosocial perspective, I will present evidence of 1) the intergenerational consequences of trauma exposure; 2) a novel adaptive immune biomarker of psychological distress during pregnancy; and 3) the influence of early caregiving environments on the infant gastrointestinal microbiome.

Peter M. Todd - How people forage in space and mind
2024-09-30 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
How people forage in space and mind
Peter M. Todd
Provost Professor of Cognitive Science, Psychology, and Informatics
Indiana University, Bloomington
How do we decide when to search for something better and when to stick with what we’ve got? People and other organisms must adaptively trade off between exploring and exploiting their environment to obtain the resources they need. This applies to whatever space they are searching, including external spatial environments, looking for patches of food, and internal information environments, seeking concepts in memory. Similar evolved underlying mechanisms may be used to address the explore/exploit tradeoff in each domain and lead people to behave as predicted by theories of foraging. In this talk, I will describe how we are studying connections between spatial search and cognitive search in a range of spaces and a range of intelligent agents.

Chimp Empire - A Screening and Panel Discussion with the Filmmakers [RSVP required; Note special time and location]
2024-10-07 18:00 - 21:00 | CNSI
Chimp Empire – A Screening and Panel Discussion with the Filmmakers
Featuring
Sara Edelson
Manager of Original Documentary Programming, Netflix
James Reed
Director, Chimp Empire
John Mitani
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of Michigan
moderated by
Clark Barrett
Professor, UCLA Department of Anthropology and
Director, UCLA Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture
and
Abigail Bigham
Associate Professor, UCLA Department of Anthropology
Vice Chair for Undergraduate Studies

Reception to follow
This event is open to the public, RSVP required. Please RSVP at: https://eventsrsvp.ucla.edu/ChimpEmpire/logon.aspx?NoID=Y

Gary Brase - How to incite a scientific revolution: A practical framework of converging evidence for behavioral sciences integration [Note special time and location]
2024-10-10 12:00 - 13:30 | Haines 332 (Discourse Lab)
How to incite a scientific revolution: A practical framework of converging evidence for behavioral sciences integration
Gary Brase
Kansas State University
If science is about the pursuit of truth, why do so many scientists disagree? Everyone should agree, at least on most things, according to the idea that there is a consistency of sciences. Others point out that science instead has repeated revolutions, in which one worldview is overthrown for a new worldview. The aim of this work is to outline a way to move behavioral sciences towards greater unity with an integrated framework (possibly inciting revolutions in the process). This is a more practical rather than philosophical approach, that is designed for researchers and others to use as a framework for better evaluating and advancing their chosen research topics. This work integrates previous frameworks (Marr’s computational framework, Tinbergen’s four questions, Schmitt & Pilcher’s converging evidence model) to be more comprehensive, complete, and specifically for the behavioral sciences. The goal is to help behavioral scientists, and other people who pay attention to and evaluate science, with a framework for thinking about topics. We will talk about the advantages and issues of this integrated framework, and examples of using the framework for specific topics.
Note: This event will be held on a Thursday, at the Discourse Lab in Haines Hall, which has limited space (15 people max). Arrive early to get a seat. Also, lunch will not be served for this event.

Irene Godoy - Kinship as constraint: Social aging in kin-structured groups
2024-10-21 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Kinship as constraint: Social aging in kin-structured groups
Irene Godoy
Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour (CRAB), University of Exeter
The dramatic increase in human life expectancy poses new challenges for health care systems. Among those challenges is that social isolation and loneliness as risk factors for mortality are highest among the elderly. We know that the social networks of adults tend to decrease in size with advancing age. However, what factors influence the rate at which an individual’s social network decreases? The answers to this question are critical to inform interventions aimed at improving late-life outcomes. In my talk, I will discuss comparative research in free-ranging, long-lived species to address age-related declines in human social integration. I will focus on non-human primates because of their close evolutionary link to humans and their long lifespans. Research in non-human primates has demonstrated similar age-related declines in sociality, though the drivers of these patterns are not well-understood. Group-living primates typically show strong kin biases in their association patterns. One key factor that may thus contribute to individual differences in social aging is kinship dynamics, as the type and number of close kin available changes across an individual’s lifespan. Drawing on data from a wild capuchin population, I will present results showing that both males and females show declines in their rates of spatial association as they age. Interestingly, age-related declines vary depending on the kinship relationship with social partners, and these effects are sex dependent. I will discuss how these (and other) results shed light on some of the myriad ways in which kinship dynamics may place constraints on how ‘social’ individuals can remain across development.

Cody Moser - Models of Collective Problem Solving: Bringing the Individual into Collective Intelligence
2024-11-04 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Models of Collective Problem Solving: Bringing the Individual into Collective Intelligence
Cody Moser
Cognitive and Information Sciences, UC Merced
The field of collective intelligence focuses on how group communication, interaction, and organization shape collective outcomes. Computational models of collective systems have been instrumental in identifying which structures promote optimal group performance. While these models often converge on common theories and principles, they typically do so at an epiphenomenal level, overlooking the causal mechanisms that drive group-level success. A significant challenge in developing a formal theory of collective intelligence lies in accounting for the role of individuals within the group. In this talk, I will discuss ongoing work aimed at addressing this gap, exploring how individual contributions influence group performance and collective problem-solving abilities.

Andreas Wilke - The adaptivity of children’s search processes
2024-11-18 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
The adaptivity of children’s search processes
Andreas Wilke
Clarkson University, Department of Psychology
Humans and other organisms must search effectively for the resources they need, whether these are physical (e.g., food or shelter) or informational (e.g., patterns in the world, or concepts stored in memory). Most human search studies have focused on brief (static) laboratory tasks, but being effective in realistic search settings requires adapting to changing environments over both short and long terms, and to changing individual abilities developmentally. In this talk, I will report on two ongoing projects that investigate how young children grow to understand searchable patterns as clusters and sequences.
A tendency to perceive illusory streaks or clumps in random sequences of data—the hot hand phenomenon—has been identified as a human universal tied to our evolutionary history of foraging for clumpy resources. In the first project, we investigated how this misperception of randomness and ecologically relevant statistical thinking broadly develops ontogenetically. Based on our work with adults, we developed three iPad-based decision-making tasks that assess how 3- to 10-year-old children decide that sequential events will continue in a streak or not, their understanding of randomness, and their ability to reason in spatially dependent terms. In a second project, we assessed more specifically to what extent children can differentiate among objective alternation probabilities of various kinds, specifically when they are non-random and do indeed contain statistical regularities. The distributions that were used included clumpy ones (where a hit is more likely to predict another hit nearby or vice versa) and dispersed ones (where a hit is more likely to predict a miss nearby or vice versa). Our project collected data at research sites in the United States and in Germany. Our analyses suggest that children, indeed, hold strong expectations of clumpy resources when they search through and reason with various statistical distributions.

David Pietraszewski - The evolutionary psychology of psychology
2024-12-02 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
The evolutionary psychology of psychology
David Pietraszewski
Psychological and Brain Sciences, UCSB
Sciences progress when the perspective-dependence of their inquiry is taken into account and corrected for. This happened in astronomy, physics, and chemistry, but it has not yet happened in the psychological and behavioral sciences. Because human beings have no choice but to use their mind to understand the mind, the mental mechanisms brought to bear on that endevour—the evolutionary psychology of psychology—constitute psychology’s perspective-dependence. In this talk, I will show how thinking about the psychology underlying the study of the mind explains (1) the problem of free will and (2) broad assumption(s) about mental processes that are perennially re-discovered and then later shown to be insufficient. Accounting for the structure of our evolved cognitive mechanisms is a necessary meta-scientific endeavour that clears away mysteries and highlights problems that need to be solved, allowing us to side-step prejudices of the mind.

Nicholas Grebe - Snark Hunting and Non-Traditional Models for the Biology of Monogamy
2025-01-06 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Snark Hunting and Non-Traditional Models for the Biology of Monogamy
Nicholas Grebe
Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
Occidental College
Since the 1950s, the field of organismal biology has warned against a single-minded focus on common, easy-to-study animal models—the lab rat being the canonical example—that comes at the expense of understanding both diversity and commonality in the mechanisms of behavior. Historically, research on the biology of monogamy has been dominated by rodent models, and in primates, by callitrichids (marmosets and tamarins). A large body of often elegant research in these animals has proven foundational to contemporary theories in organismal biology. At the same time, looking beyond these popular models has revealed a diversity of behavior under the umbrella of ‘monogamy’, and in many cases, a corresponding diversity in underlying physiological mechanisms. This talk will cover research on the biology and evolution of monogamy in two non-traditional primate models—lemurs and mountain gorillas—and will discuss what can be gained from studying the social worlds of non-model organisms.

Justin Lund - Storytelling, sovereignty, and STEM
2025-01-27 12:00 - 13:30 | 352 Haines Hall
Storytelling, sovereignty, and STEM
Justin Lund
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology
OSU Center for Health Sciences
Inclusive and engaged research and education are essential for fostering equity and mutual respect. Yet, academic approaches to culturally appropriate knowledge production and community engagement vary widely. Indigenous communities have long been a focus of research, often emphasizing their ways of living, biologies, and narratives—frequently without equitable collaboration. To move toward more just engagement, educators and researchers must embrace decolonization practices that prioritize Tribal sovereignty and self-determination. While “decolonization” is often invoked as a buzzword, its practical application can be deeply transformative. In this talk, Dr. Lund will share insights from education and research initiatives co-created with Indigenous communities and students. These efforts aim to honor Tribal sovereignty and cultivate a new generation of Indigenous scientists, setting a model for equitable and impactful collaborations.

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 | 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.
