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 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 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 […]

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, 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 […]

Cooperation in the natural world can, at first glance, appear puzzling: why should an animal cooperate when doing so is costly, and would benefit a competitor? In this talk, I will address this question by investigating links between cooperation and animal health using field studies of wild birds and mammals. I will first test whether […]

Homo medicus: The transition to meat eating, increased pathogen pressure, and the constitutive and inducible use of pharmacological plants in Homo Edward H. Hagen, Aaron D. Blackwell, Aaron D. Lightner, Roger J. Sullivan Click here for link to manuscript pre-print   The human lineage entered a more carnivorous niche 2.6 mya. A range of evidence […]