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 […]