Rich Connor: University of Massachusetts DartmouthFor over 25 years we have documented a multi-level alliance structure among male bottlenose dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia. Males cooperate in pairs and trios, ‘1st-order alliances,’ to form temporary consortships with individual females. First-order alliance partners are drawn from a male’s second-order alliance. Second-order alliances have 4-14 males […]
Lucia Jacobs: University of Caliornia, BerkeleyThe chemical senses of vertebrates present some of the most enduring mysteries of brain evolution. First, it is not clear why are there two olfactory systems: the main system (MOS), detecting odorants on the olfactory epithelium and projecting to the olfactory bulb, and the accessory system (AOS), detecting odorants in […]
Michelle Kline: The University of California, Los AngelesHumans are heavily reliant on cultural adaptation, and have coevolved with culture for millennia. Teaching enhances the fidelity of cultural transmission and should be common in such a culture-dependent species. However, existing data present a puzzle concerning the role of teaching in human evolution. While biologists have documented […]
