BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture - ECPv6.15.20//NONSGML v1.0//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
X-WR-CALNAME:Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://bec.ucla.edu
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture
REFRESH-INTERVAL;VALUE=DURATION:PT1H
X-Robots-Tag:noindex
X-PUBLISHED-TTL:PT1H
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:America/Los_Angeles
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20240310T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20241103T090000
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20250309T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20251102T090000
END:STANDARD
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0800
TZOFFSETTO:-0700
TZNAME:PDT
DTSTART:20260308T100000
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0700
TZOFFSETTO:-0800
TZNAME:PST
DTSTART:20261101T090000
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251103T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251103T133000
DTSTAMP:20260418T230414
CREATED:20250821T023020Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251018T133347Z
UID:111369-1762171200-1762176600@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Richard Karban (UC-Davis) - Plant Communication and Individual Personalities
DESCRIPTION:This talk will attempt to answer three questions: 1) Do plants communicate about their risk of herbivory? 2) Do plants have individual personalities with respect to communication? 3) Why does this matter? \nBiologists have known for a long time that plants sense their environments and respond accordingly\, i.e.\, they exhibit “behavior.” Whether they communicate with each other with respect to their risk of being attacked by insect herbivores has been more controversial. We have found that sagebrush plants that are attacked by insects or mechanically damaged emit volatiles. Neighboring sagebrush plants sense these volatiles and increase their resistance to herbivory. Volatiles are required for this eavesdropping between individuals and between branches on a single individual. In the field\, this eavesdropping increased the survival of seedlings and the production of flowers and new shoots for older plants. Individual plants showed relatively stable tendencies in their emission of active cues and also in their responses to cues. In other words\, they showed tendencies that were consistent over time and also consistent across different situations\, i.e.\, they exhibited personalities. For example\, individuals that were good receivers were also good emitters. Recognizing that plants communicate via volatile cues expands our view of the sophisticated behaviors that plants are capable of. It may also allow us to design more effective pest management strategies. Recognizing that plants have individual personalities forces us to think about their past experiences and to consider correlations between behaviors. \n  \nZoom link for those unable to attend in person: \nhttps://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=0YGsaJFEdLd5cMsOhTh465nwJubz9o.1 \nMeeting ID: 943 0873 0584 \nPasscode: 308291
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/richard-karban-uc-davis-title-tba/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251117T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20251117T133000
DTSTAMP:20260418T230414
CREATED:20250821T023130Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251014T155116Z
UID:111372-1763380800-1763386200@bec.ucla.edu
SUMMARY:Bret Beheim\, MPI-EVAN - "Planck's Principle\, Price's Theorem and the Forces of Cultural Evolution" (via Zoom)
DESCRIPTION:Abstract: \nPhysicist Max Planck famously said that “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light\, but rather because its opponents eventually die”. This is basically a theory of human cultural change\, one rooted primarily in the mechanisms of differential recruitment\, inheritance and demography. If the Planck Principle (as it has come to be known) is a key explanatory force\, it has major implications for the study of cultural evolution\, which has instead traditionally focused on the role of social and individual learning (as people ‘see the light’). Although there have been several projects focusing on the role of demographic turnover in cultural evolution\, evidence to date has been mixed and equivocal. A key theoretical limitation has been the lack of a principled way to compare the relative strength of different forces of cultural evolution. \nTo solve this problem\, we adapt the method of *evolutionary decomposition* pioneered in mathematical demography\, which applies Price’s Theorem to trajectories of phenotypic change. Using a novel derivation of this approach tailored to historical archives of creative human culture\, we can measure (for the first time) the relatively explanatory strength of three categories of force in cultural evolution\, namely\, the entrances of new cohorts\, the process of attrition\, and the “changiness” of individuals over the course of their creative careers. Taking this to a variety of high-resolution longitudinal datasets\, including song lyrics\, board game strategies\, and stylistic themes in European literature and musical compositions\, we find strong evidence for the importance of population turnover and the entrance of new cohorts with splashy\, disruptive ideas. Rather than Planck’s formulation of cultural change “one funeral at a time”\, however\, we find instead many circumstances where cultural change occurs “one birth at a time”. We also find systematic differences in the relative strength of these three categories of force\, with some systems being driven by social learning and strategic adoption dynamics consistent with the canonical models of social learning\, while others being mostly characterized by the slower process of demographic replacement. Our results demonstrate the value of an expanded\, force-centric approach to studying long-term cultural change. \nZoom link: \nhttps://ucla.zoom.us/j/94308730584?pwd=0YGsaJFEdLd5cMsOhTh465nwJubz9o.1 \nMeeting ID: 943 0873 0584 \nPasscode: 308291
URL:https://bec.ucla.edu/event/bret-beheim-mpi-evan-title-tba/
LOCATION:352 Haines Hall
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR