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Alyssa Crittenden – Microbiomania, rewilding, and the threat of bioprospecting: How anthropologists can help to set a more ethical research agenda in microbiome sciences

Microbiomania, rewilding, and the threat of bioprospecting: How anthropologists can help to set a more ethical research agenda in microbiome sciences Alyssa N. Crittenden Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas Scientific knowledge and commercial interest in the human microbiome are growing exponentially. As our understanding of the vital role of microbes increases, so […]

Herman Pontzer – Evolution, Activity, and Aging in Human Energy Expenditure

Evolution, Activity, and Aging in Human Energy Expenditure Herman Pontzer Duke University Metabolic energy expenditure, the combined activity of our 37 trillion cells, and shapes our daily energy requirements and affects our health. Conventional wisdom, born largely from clinical studies in industrialized populations, has held that daily energy expenditures are similar for closely related species, […]

James Holland Jones — Cultural Evolutionary Dynamics Under Structural Uncertainty and the Consequences for Coupled Diffusion Processes

Cultural Evolutionary Dynamics Under Structural Uncertainty and the Consequences for Coupled Diffusion Processes James Holland Jones Earth Systems Science, Stanford University The COVID-19 Pandemic has laid bare the social vulnerabilities that make epidemics larger, more deadly, and more difficult to control, both within the US and internationally. Differential vulnerability by social attributes (e.g., race, socioeconomic […]

Damian Caillaud – Behavioral ecology: an important tool to protect threatened gorilla populations

Behavioral ecology: an important tool to protect threatened gorilla populations. Damian Caillaud, UC Davis Conservation measures are often based on survey data and demographic projections, rather than behavior ecology studies. However, animal behavior research often provides key information explaining why some populations are threatened with extinction. For example, aspects of the ranging behavior and social […]

Idan Blank – The relationship between language and executive functions

Idan Blank UCLA Department of Psychology Two cognitive capacities that “make us human” are our ability to communicate via language and our executive functions (working memory, cognitive control, inhibition, etc.), both unparalleled in the animal kingdom. Language comprehension is mainly carried out by specialized mechanisms that are language-specific and are not engaged in other high-level […]

Sarah Hill – Cytokines as a mediator of condition-dependent behavioral strategies

Sarah E. Hill Department of Psychology, Texas Christian University A growing body of research finds that the activities of the immune system – in addition to protecting the body from infection and injury – also influence how we think, feel, and behave. Although research on the relationship between the immune system and psychological and behavioral […]

Cody Ross – Social networks, network-structured economic games, and a toolbox for fine-scale, comparative research

In this talk, I review challenges of collecting and analyzing human social network data. I first discuss trade-offs between the use of roster-based and name-generator-based tools for studying cooperative networks, and highlight the potential of roster-based, network-structured economic games (e.g., the RICH economic games introduced by Gervais 2017) to address anthropological questions. I then introduce […]

David Raichlen – Evolutionary links between physical activity and brain health

Recent work suggests physical activity can have important beneficial effects on the aging brain, however the underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood. An evolutionary-neuroscience approach may help us better understand these mechanisms and can provide a foundation for developing novel interventions to improve brain aging. Here, we suggest that, from an evolutionary perspective, physical activity mainly […]

Melissa Emery Thompson – The Gray Ape: What Can Chimpanzees Tell Us About Human Aging?

Melissa Emery Thompson Evolutionary Anthropology, University of New Mexico Given their close evolutionary relationship to humans and lifespans that can extend into their 60s, chimpanzees are a uniquely informative comparative model for the evolution of human aging. Here, I will review early findings of the first focused study of aging in wild chimpanzees. Chimpanzees share […]

Bernard Koch – White Supremacist Trees in An Academic Forest: Does Anybody Hear Them?

Bernard Koch, UCLA Sociology In this paper, we quantify the enduring legacy of scientific racism both within academia and online. Hereditarian arguments correlating race and IQ have been used to justify regressive social policies since the 1950s, and this literature remains active within academia today. We characterize a tight collaboration community of authors promoting these […]