Indigenous Data Lifecycles for Indigenous Futures
2022-09-26 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles)
Dr. Keolu Fox, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, UCSD
This speaker will be presenting in person.
Indigenous Data Lifecycles for Indigenous Futures
Abstract: According to The Economist, in 2018 oil was the most-traded commodity in the world. But in 2019, the demand for oil had been surpassed by the demand for data, including digital sequence information (DSI) of genetic resources. Despite increasing enthusiasm for historically marginalized communities’ participation in biomedical research and a recognition of the potential for next-generation precision medicine, concerns around control and access of data derived from these populations remain. This lecture will highlight the emergence of new tools to enable equitable Indigenous data futures. Specifically it will explore key paths forward that are not only rooted in Indigenous Data Sovereignty (IDS), but circular economic systems, and place-based innovation. It will also highlight the potential for vertical integration and control of stacks of technology, including dynamic consent, data trusts, digital ledger systems, and cloud computation to empower Indigenous communities for generations to come.
Zoom link: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94813693836?pwd=[REDACTED]
Zoom Meeting ID: 928 2643 6236
Passcode: BEC

Aspects of competition and cooperation in the genus Pan
2022-10-03 12:00 - 13:30
Dr. Martin Surbeck, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Human Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University
This talk will be presented via Zoom.
Aspects of competition and cooperation in the genus Pan.
Abstract: I will talk about aspects of competition and cooperation in our closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees. Firstly, I will explore how differences in female sexuality and male mate competition potentially contribute to observed species differences. There will be a specific focus on the role of mothers during mate competition in male philopatric species and I will speculate about potential implications for life histories. Secondly, I will explore aspects of between group competition in bonobos and discuss the implications of the new findings for the emergence of cooperative relationships between groups.
Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/92826436236?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 928 2643 6236
Passcode: BEC

Laughter and Smiles: Towards understanding the Complexity and Phylogenetic Continuity of Positive Communication in Hominids
2022-10-17 12:00 - 13:30
Dr. Marina Davila-Ross, Reader in Comparative Psychology, University of Portsmouth
This talk will be presented via Zoom.
Laughter and Smiles: Towards understanding the Complexity and Phylogenetic Continuity of Positive Communication in Hominids
Abstract: Laughter and smiles are arguably the strongest behavioural indicators of positive emotional states in humans and they also represent pervasive tools of social communication, help to develop and maintain social relationships, and affect individuals‘ health and wellbeing. It, thus, may not come to a surprise that these important behaviours are deeply rooted in human biology. More specifically, empirical research on hominids suggests that laughter and smiles are evolutionarily continuous, going back to at least the past 13 million years. As a result, an in-depth evaluation of laughter and smiles in great apes may provide a better understanding of why humans, a highly social-cognitive species, behave the way they do. This talk attempts to reconstruct the evolution of laughter and smiles in great apes and humans by assessing form and function of these expressions in their natural social interactions. Comparative and phylogenetic approaches are applied that include acoustic analyses, FACS (Facial Action Coding System) specifically designed to study great apes, and the coding of bodily actions.
Zoom link: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94813693836?pwd=[REDACTED]
Zoom Meeting ID: 928 2643 6236
Passcode: BEC

Growing up in a dynamic social world: early-life effects on behavior and neuroendocrine function
2022-10-24 12:00 - 13:30
Dr. Tessa Solomon-Lane, Asst. Professor of Biology, Keck Science Dept., Claremont McKenna, Pitzer & Scripps Colleges
More info: https://tessasolomonlane.com/
This speaker will be presenting in person.
Growing up in a dynamic social world: early-life effects on behavior and neuroendocrine function
Abstract: Why, and how, do individuals behave the way they do? Social behavior has long captivated researchers from diverse fields. Social behavior is common to a remarkably wide range of species, its expression is complex and patterned, and it has deeply conserved effects on evolutionary fitness and health. Similarly, the neuroendocrine signaling pathways that regulate social behavior are also evolutionarily ancient. Early-life experiences are a powerful source of individual variation in adult behavior, yet fundamental questions remain about the development of social behavior and its underlying mechanisms. In my lab, we use the highly social Burton’s Mouthbrooder cichlid fish (Astatotilapia burtoni), a model system in social neuroscience, to investigate the social, behavioral, and neuroendocrine mechanisms regulating the development of social behavior. This species is known for the mixed-sex, hierarchical communities formed by adults, in which individuals express social behaviors common across vertebrates, such as aggression, affiliation, courtship, parenting, and cooperation. As is the case in primates, juveniles are social from the earliest life history stage. I will present the results of a series of experiments that demonstrate that juveniles form nuanced, complex social relationships, and how early-life social environments sculpt social behavior, nonapeptide signaling, and neuroendocrine stress axis function. I will discuss how this work expands our understanding of behavioral development and the origins of individual variation in adult phenotypes, from fish to humans
Zoom link: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/94813693836?pwd=[REDACTED]
Zoom Meeting ID: 928 2643 6236
Passcode: BEC

The Brain’s Crescendo; How Music Training Impacts Child Development
2022-10-31 12:00 - 13:30
Dr. Assal Habibi, Assoc. Professor of Psychology, University of Southern California
This speaker will be presenting in person.
The Brain’s Crescendo; How Music Training Impacts Child Development
Abstract: In an ongoing multi-year longitudinal study, we have been investigating the effects of a group-based music training program on development of children, beginning at age 6, using behavioral, neuroimaging and electrophysiological measures. The target group of children have been participating in the Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles (YOLA) program. This music program is based on the Venezuelan system of musical training known as El-Sistema and offers free music instruction 6–7 hours weekly to children from underprivileged and under-resourced areas of Los Angeles. The children in the music program have been compared with two groups of children, one involved in a community-based sports program and another not enrolled in any systematic afterschool training. At the onset, we established that there were no pre-existing differences among the groups. Over the course of 5 years, we have observed that children in the music group had better performance than comparison groups in musically relevant auditory skills (pitch and rhythm discrimination) and showed an accelerated maturity of auditory processing as measured by cortical auditory evoked potentials. We also observed that children in the music group showed a different rate of cortical thickness maturation between the right and left posterior superior temporal gyrus and higher fractional anisotropy in the corpus callosum, specifically in the crossing pathways connecting superior frontal, sensory, and motor segments. For nonmusical skills, children with music training, compared with children without music training, showed stronger neural activation during a cognitive inhibition task in brain regions involved in response inhibition and decision making (bilateral pre-SMA/SMA, ACC, IFG). Finally, we observed that parents of children involved in music training, after four years, rated their children higher on the emotional stability personality trait and lower on aggression and on hyperactivity compared to children not involved in music activities despite no differences in these measures before children’s entry into the program. Considering a general reduction in art education specifically in the communities that there is limited access to art exposure in general, and specifically to music education, the findings from this study is providing compelling answers to the ongoing discussion about music’s role in the education curriculum.
Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/92826436236?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 928 2643 6236
Passcode: BEC

Female counterstrategies to infanticide in lactating gelada females: adaptive, but not cost-free
2022-11-07 12:00 - 13:30
Dr. Amy Lu, Asst. Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, Stony Brook University
This talk will be presented via Zoom.
Female counterstrategies to infanticide in lactating gelada females: adaptive, but not cost-free
Abstract: Adverse socioecological conditions can have pervasive effects on health and fitness. For mothers, adverse conditions can trigger cost-cutting strategies that limit investment in reproduction. These strategies can further impact the health and fitness of current and future offspring. Geladas are an ideal species in which to investigate the intersection between maternal and offspring responses to adversity. Gelada females reside in one-male units where a “leader” male has sole reproductive access to 2-13 adult females. Males without reproductive units must challenge and depose an existing leader to gain reproductive opportunities, and such “takeover” events are known to lead to infanticide, elevated glucocorticoids (GCs), and increased injury risk for all natal individuals within the group. Takeover risk also impacts gelada female reproductive physiology: immature females accelerate reproductive maturation, gestating mothers experience fetal loss (“Bruce effect”), and lactating mothers are suspected of producing immediate signals of fertility (sex skin swellings) that deter the likelihood of infanticide. Here, we draw on over 10 years of data from the Simien Mountains Gelada Research Project to examine the potential costs and benefits associated with this presumed strategy observed in lactating females. We found that lactating gelada females that experienced a takeover produced sex skin swellings earlier than those that did not. However, females with younger infants were less likely to produce such swellings and infant age at maternal swelling was correlated with the subsequent interbirth interval, suggesting that mothers that swell earlier divest in current offspring. Finally, infants that experienced a takeover were more likely to survive when mothers produced swellings, but also when they were simply older at takeover. Taken together, our results suggest that although the production of sex skin swellings by lactating females increases infant survival in geladas, they are not cost-free and may lead to downstream developmental consequences for infants. Furthermore, mothers of the youngest gelada infants are constrained: they are less able to produce swellings, yet their infants are more likely to die of infanticide.
Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/92826436236?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 928 2643 6236
Passcode: BEC

Human Uniqueness and the study of interdependence in Samal “sea nomads” of the Philippines
2022-11-14 12:00 - 13:30
Dr. Kim Hill, Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University
This talk will be presented via Zoom.
Human Uniqueness and the study of interdependence in Samal “sea nomads” of the Philippines.
Abstract: Humans are an extreme outlier species by many objective measures. How did we get to be so different from the other 9 million eukaryotic species on the planet? Decades of research suggests that even in the most traditional human societies a combination of interacting factors makes us unique: culture, cooperation, cognition, communication. This also lead to the co-evolution of a very unique life history, that required economic interdependence in order to be successful. In this talk I will present new research from Sama “sea nomads” that examines transfers of material goods and services between households. The pattern shows again the amazing interdependence of human breeding pairs in order to successfully replicate. We also find a unique pattern of highly cooperative behavior between very distant relatives. Because the genetic coefficients between cooperators is extremely low, this pattern cannot be explained by inclusive fitness, and is probably only possible because of the unique combination of social structure, cooperation, and communication that characterizes our species.
Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/92826436236?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 928 2643 6236
Passcode: BEC

Cultural rescue: avoiding extinction with gene-culture coevolution
2022-11-21 12:00 - 13:30
Dr. Laurel Fogarty, Senior Scientist, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
This talk will be presented via Zoom.
Cultural rescue: avoiding extinction with gene-culture coevolution.
Abstract: It is often suggested that the adaptability and success of human populations is a direct result of our sophisticated cultural abilities. Previously, we have suggested that in cases where lethal environmental shifts cause population decline, culture may be able to rescue an otherwise doomed population — in other words cause a ‘cultural population rescue’. Innovation and cultural transmission together might provide behavioural adaptations that could compensate for the detrimental effect of an environmental change. To the extent that such innovations could spread and be maintained through cultural transmission, such a process could indefinitely compensate for novel harsh environmental conditions.
However, such a scenario may be rare and culture might do more. Organisms with large body sizes and long generation times, like humans, are not typically thought to be able to undergo true ‘evolutionary rescue’, where compensatory genetic mutations arise and allow the demographic recovery of a declining population. As a consequence of long waiting times for beneficial mutations, where generation times are long, and population sizes are relatively small, populations are overwhelmingly likely to die out before such mutations arise and spread to high frequency. We suggest that where culture does not lead to a direct ‘cultural rescue’, it might nevertheless slow population decline providing time in which compensatory genetic mutations may arise. This mechanism seems plausible. However, the key to understanding the importance of culture in human population survival lies in describing how frequently such culturally-facilitated evolutionary rescues could occur and under what circumstances they are plausible, likely, or impossible.
In this talk I will describe a mathematical model of evolutionary rescue that allows for direct gene-culture interactive effects on biological fitness, and examine the probability of population rescue in the presence and absence of culture.
Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/92826436236?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 928 2643 6236
Passcode: BEC

Skill acquisition and life history: towards a better understanding of cognitive evolution
2022-11-28 12:00 - 13:30
Dr. Caroline Schuppli, Max Planck Research Group leader, MPI for Animal Behavior
This talk will be presented via Zoom.
Skill acquisition and life history: towards a better understanding of cognitive evolution
Abstract: Cognitive capacity gets selected for via skills and abilities which provide individuals with fitness benefits. However, strikingly, the larger brained a species is, the more incompetent its infants are at birth and the more they must learn to become functioning adults. This suggests that especially for large-brained species, the developmental construction of intelligence critically depends on inputs during ontogeny. Therefore, to understand the evolution of cognition, we need to look at how skills and abilities develop in individuals. To shed light on these questions, we conduct long-term research on orangutans as well as look at broader patterns across species using comparative analyses. Our results suggest that that extended developmental periods during which skills can develop as well as learning mechanisms that allow for efficient skill acquisition are crucial for the evolution of high-level cognition.
Zoom: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/92826436236?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 928 2643 6236
Passcode: BEC

Culture, Power, and Social Change - Living and Dying in Transit: Violence, Space and Gender in the North African-Mediterranean Frontier
2023-05-25 12:30 | Haines 352
Living and Dying in Transit: Violence, Space and Gender in the North African-Mediterranean Frontier
Tunisia is caught between a rock and a hard place. Located along the central Mediterranean migration route connecting Sub-Saharan Africa to Europe. Tunisia has recently become the main country of departure towards Italy, placing it at the centre of EU migration policy. The presentation will explore Tunisian and European border policies as well as the strategies migrants – women and men – employ to stay safe and move on in their lives.

Ahlam Chemlali is a PhD fellow at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS), Department of Migration and Global Order and Aalborg University, Department of Politics and Society in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research explores the effects of European border policies in North Africa, with particular emphasis on the local and gendered effects in the Tunisian-Libyan borderlands. Prior to her PhD Chemlali worked almost a decade in a human rights organisation on issues related to migration, violence and torture. Chemlali has published in Geopolitics, Trends in Organized Crime, Forced Migration Review and Revue Tunisienne de Science Politique.

Please follow this link for the full poster and event page: Chemlali-poster May 25 CPSC

Professor Smith: "Nature Always Wins"
2023-05-25 14:00 - 17:00 | UCLA Kerckhoff Art Gallery
Nature is active in conquering us not only through the occasional earthquake or flood, but in the subtleties of vegetation that turn every settlement into an ongoing archaeological site. What do we see when we look down? Grass growing in the cracks of freeway pavements, and plants taking root in the little crevices of buildings and alleys.
Professor Monica L. Smith, an archaeologist and member of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability at UCLA, takes us on a photographic journey to the world of vibrant and resilient vegetation underfoot. She shows us how an artist’s eye resides within all of us, enabling us to see what we usually filter out of our perception as we traverse the streets of Los Angeles.
The exhibit coincides with the release of her edited volume, The Power of Nature, published by the University Press of Colorado and featuring a number of UCLA authors.
Note: Exhibition runs from May 22-26, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Hostile Terrain 94: The Undocumented Migration Project
2023-05-25 16:00
The Undocumented Migration Project: Hostile Terrain 94 exhibit on Thursday, May 25, 4-6 pm at The Fowler courtyard.
Please join us to honor the lives of migrants who have lost their lives crossing the Sonoran desert, featuring live music, food, community, and a chance to participate in the installation.
There will be a roundtable discussion featuring Jason De León, UCLA Professor of Anthropology and Chicana/o and Central American Studies, Enrique Campos, Program Director at the UCLA Undocumented Student Program within the Bruin Resource Center, and Angela Gonzales and Carlos Rouzaud, UCLA students within the Chicana/o and Central American Studies and Anthropology departments.
Please RSVP HERE to reserve food.
We will be setting up the project all day tomorrow, Tuesday, May 23 and Wednesday, May 24 at The Fowler (inside right in front of the courtyard), so stop by if you are interested in helping or saying hello! Email me with questions. We look forward to seeing you all!
HT94 is a multi-media exhibition that records the journeys and testimonies of undocumented migrants and their families who attempt to cross the U.S.–Mexico border. The exhibition includes an array of multi-sensorial components that speak directly to the migrant experience, such as photographic narratives of border crossers, found objects left behind by migrants in the desert, videos, an interactive story-recording studio where the public may share their personal immigration stories, and a 16-foot long participatory wall map of the Arizona/Mexico border containing hand-written toe tags with QR codes that connect to online content regarding migrant issues along America’s southern border representing people who have died while crossing the border between the mid-1990s and 2022.

UCLA Department of Anthropology: Open House
2023-09-27 10:00 - 12:00 | Haines 352
UCLA Department of Anthropology invites you to a Open House, this Wednesday 9/27/2023, at 10am. The open house will be conduced in Haines Hall, Room 352.

Barbara Natterson-Horowitz – The 600-million-year history of human affective disorder
2023-10-02 12:00 - 13:30 | Haines 352
Fifty years ago this October, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to three animal behaviorists based on the belief that the emerging field of ethology could transform our understanding of human biobehavioral health. Unfortunately, the promise was not realized within the lifetimes of the scientists themselves. In the decades that followed, advances in biological psychiatry challenged psychoanalysis as the singular source of explanatory insights into mental illness. Regrettably, highly reductive biological approaches that lack a broader, integrated organismal and ecological context have not led to much needed transformational knowledge.
Today, broadly comparative and ecologically-informed studies of animal behavior are revealing: 1) the ancient origins of human affective systems and affective disorders in the social brain networks of early social animals, 2) the important links between brain biology promoting adaptive behavior in chronically subordinated animals and neurovegetative symptoms in depressed human beings, and 3) evidence that withdrawn behavior, anhedonia, and reduced cognitive and motoric activity in chronic subordinates increases survival in certain individuals. Recent studies connecting social defeat to severe depression point, once again, to animal behavior as a source of insights into human mental health. In fact, phylogenetic perspectives can provide much needed scaffolding on which to layer, with context, the rapidly growing body of reductive knowledge about the human brain in health and illness.
Dr Natterson-Horowitz’s lecture will first survey the historical and scientific settings in which both insights were recognized and overlooked. She will then present an up-to-date summary of insights into human affective disorders emerging at the intersection of behavioral ecology, neurobiology, psychopharmacology, and evolutionary biology.

Caleb Finch – The Gero-Exposome, a life history approach to diversity of human longevity
2023-10-16 12:00 - 13:30 | Haines 352
From egg to exit, human life history is determined by environmental interactions with our genome (GxE). The Gero-Exposome provides a framework for analyzing GxE interactions with life style, biomes, and systemic factors. Lifespans difference of 15 years across the socio-economic status (SES) have corresponding differences in the onset of cardiovascular disease and dementia. Moreover, SES influences the development of brain and vasculature, by greater gestational exposure to air pollution and cigarette smoke in low SES. Multiple postnatal phases have environmental influences throughout the lifespan. As an experimental model for these complexities, mice were gestationally exposed to air pollution. Young adults had more body fat and glucose intolerance, while brains had lower levels of hypothalamic neuropeptides and neuronal stem cells in the hippocampus. These findings are relevant to the multi-generational stability of SES differences in health and lifespan, for which the GxE basis is undefined.

Dr. Jarrett Zigon (William & Linda Porterfield Chair in Biomedical Ethics and Professor of Anthropology, University of Virginia)
2023-10-30 15:00 - 16:30 | Haines 352

Jason de León: Soldiers and Kings
2024-04-04 19:00 - 20:00 | Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA, 91101, United States
Political instability, poverty, climate change, and the insatiable appetite for cheap labor all fuel clandestine movement across borders. As those borders harden, the demand for smugglers who aid migrants across them increases every year. Yet the real lives and work of smugglers–or coyotes, or guides, as they are often known by the migrants who hire their services–are only ever reported on from a distance, using tired tropes and stereotypes, often depicted as boogie men and violent warlords. In an effort to better understand this essential yet extralegal billion dollar global industry, internationally recognized anthropologist and expert Jason De León embedded with a group of smugglers moving migrants across Mexico over the course of seven years.
The result of this unique and extraordinary access is SOLDIERS AND KINGS: the first ever in-depth, character-driven look at human smuggling. It is a heart-wrenching and intimate narrative that revolves around the life and death of one coyote who falls in love and tries to leave smuggling behind. In a powerful, original voice, De León expertly chronicles the lives of low-level foot soldiers breaking into the smuggling game, and morally conflicted gang leaders who oversee rag-tag crews of guides and informants along the migrant trail. SOLDIERS AND KINGS is not only a ground-breaking up-close glimpse of a difficult-to-access world, it is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction. (Viking)

Event date:

Thursday, April 4, 2024 – 7:00pm

Event address:

Vroman’s Bookstore
695 E Colorado Blvd

Pasadena, CA 91101
