"Adversity and Advantage: The influence of social environments on fitness in social mammals", Susan Alberts Colloquium Lecture

Date: 

Thursday, April 21, 2016, 11:30am to 12:30pm

Location: 

Geological Lecture Hall (Room 100), Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Susan Alberts is a Bass Fellow and Professor at Duke University. She codirects the Amboseli Baboon Research Project with Jeanne Altmann of Princeton University. Her research focuses on two populations of large mammals. For both populations, detailed life histories are available and observation conditions are very good. The savannah baboon population in Amboseli National Park, southern Kenya, has been the subject of ongoing research for over 30 years by the Amboseli Baboon Research Project. The elephant population in Amboseli has also been the subject of intensive behavioral and demographic research for 25 years, by the Amboseli Elephant Research Project. These two populations are among the best-studied mammal populations in the world and provide truly exceptional opportunities for understanding the relationships between social behavior, relatedness, and population genetic structure.