Haller Hall (Room 102), Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Dr. Richard Bribiescas is the Deputy Provost for Faculty Development and Diversity, Professor of Anthropology and Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University. He is also a Primary Investigator in the Yale Reproductive Ecology Laboratory and the Program in Reproductive Ecology, a Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies sponsored research initiative. His most notable research involves the evolutionary biology and endocrinology of human and comparative life histories, reproduction, aging, and metabolism. He has conducted field research among the Ache people of Paraguay...
Northwest B101, 52 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Beginning in 2010, it became practical to examine whole genomes from ancient humans, and to use the data to understand changes in our biology over time. In this talk, I will describe how DNA has been used to obtain new insights into the interaction between modern and archaic humans, as well as the history of natural selection.
Haller Hall (Room 102), Geological Museum, 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Samuel Urlacher (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Human Evolutionary Biology) will be presenting his doctoral dissertation defense on Friday, April 22 at 1:00pm.
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...
Geological Lecture Hall (Room 100), 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Kate Carter (Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Human Evolutionary Biology) will be presenting her doctoral dissertation defense on Monday, April 11 at 10:00am.
Geological Lecture Hall (Room 100), 24 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Abstract: Convergent developments across social scientific disciplines provide evidence that ritual is a psychologically prepared, culturally inherited, behavioral trademark of our species. I will draw upon the anthropological and evolutionary science literatures to provide a psychological account of the social functions of ritual in group behavior. Solving the adaptive problems associated with group living requires psychological mechanisms for identifying group members, ensuring their commitment to the group, facilitating cooperation with their coalition, and...
Science Center Hall A, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Abstract: Since Darwin, it has been recognized that human culture evolves in ways that “curiously parallel” biological evolution. The analogy is not perfect, but these broad parallels of process mean that evolutionary biologists and those studying human culture are interested in similar questions and can often use similar tools to answer those questions. In this talk I will show how methods and thinking from evolutionary biology can be productively adapted to shed light on human cultural diversity in domains as varied as language, religion and the fortunes of nation states...
Science Center Hall A, 1 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Dr. Rasmus Nielsen's research focuses on statistical and computational aspects of evolutionary theory and genetics. One of the central problems he has been interested in is the molecular basis of evolutionary adaptation. What happens at the molecular levels as one species is transformed into another over evolutionary time? To address this question he has developed a number of computational methods and applied them to large scale genomic data, such as genomic comparisons of humans and chimpanzees. Dr. Nielsen has also worked on statistical methods in other aspects of population...