Spring 2021 Speakers

Tim Clutton-Brock

Title: The evolution of cooperative breeding in mammals. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 02 March 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. Meerkats: cooperative breeding in the Kalahari. In Cooperative Breeding in Vertebrates.

2. Cooperative breeding. In Mammal Societies.

3. Meerkat helpers buffer the detrimental effects of adverse environmental conditions on fecundity, growth and survival.

Susan E. Perry

Title: Determinants of behavioral variation in wild white-faced capuchins at Lomas Barbudal: the value of long-term field studies. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 09 March 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. The behavior of wild white-faced capuchins: Demography, life history, social relationships, and communication.

2. Behavioural variation and learning across the lifespan in wild white-faced capuchin monkeys.

3. Older, sociable capuchins (Cebus capucinus) invent more social behaviors, but younger monkeys innovate more in other contexts.

John W. Fitzpatrick

Title: Supersize It: Fire Cycles, Competition for Space, and Cooperative Breeding in the Florida Scrub-Jay. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 23 March 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. Natal territory size, group size, and body mass affect lifetime fitness in the cooperatively breeding Florida Scrub-Jay.

2. Investigating social and environmental predictors of natal dispersal in a cooperative breeding bird.

3. Florida scrub-jays: Oversized territories and group defense in a fire-maintained habitat. In: Cooperative Breeding in Vertebrates: Studies of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior.

Douglas J. Emlen

Title: Extreme Weapons: A Natural History. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 30 March 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. Population differences in the strength of sexual selection match relative weapon size in the Japanese rhinoceros beetle, Trypoxylus dichotomus (Coleoptera: Scarabaeidae).

2. Cybernetic combatants support the importance of duels in the evolution of extreme weapons.

3. On the evolution of extreme structures: static scaling and the function of sexually selected signals.

Joan E. Strassmann

Title: What does cooperation and conflict in microbes have in common with animal social behavior? Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 6 April 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. Cooperation and conflict in social amoebas.

2. Evolutionary Conflict.

3. The veil of ignorance can favor biological cooperation.

4. How to increase creativity in research.

Christian Pirk

Title: The interaction of pheromones, diet and reproduction in the honeybee. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 13 April 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. The Biology of the Cape Honey Bee, Apis mellifera capensis (Hymenoptera: Apidae): A Review of Thelytoky and Its Influence on Social Parasitism and Worker Reproduction.

2. Turning workers into false queens: the role of exogenous pheromones in regulating reproduction in worker honey bees.

3. The importance of protein type and protein to carbohydrate ratio for survival and ovarian activation of caged honeybees (Apis mellifera scutellata).

4. Individual vs. social pathway to honeybee worker reproduction (Apis mellifera): pollen or jelly as protein source for oogenesis?

Gerald Carter

Title: Cooperative relationships in vampire bats. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 20 April 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. Food sharing in vampire bats: reciprocal help predicts donations more than relatedness or harassment.

2. Social bet-hedging in vampire bats.

3. Development of new food-sharing relationships in vampire bats.

László Zsolt Garamszegi

Title: The evolutionary ecology of dogs: phylogenetic comparative studies at the within-species level. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 27 April 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. The link between selection for function and human-directed play behaviour in dogs.

2. The role of common ancestry and gene flow in the evolution of human‐directed play behaviour in dogs.

3. Controlling for non-independence in comparative analysis of patterns across populations within species.

Dustin R. Rubenstein

Title: Causes and Consequences of Sociality: Spanning Molecules to Populations. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 04 May 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. Coevolution of genome architecture and social behavior.

2. Locally-adapted reproductive photoperiodism determines population vulnerability to climate change.

3. Patterns of genome size variation in snapping shrimp.

Barbara Taborsky

Title: The evolution of plastic social phenotypes. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 11 May 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. Social competence: an evolutionary approach.

2. Divergence of developmental trajectories is triggered interactively by early social and ecological experience in a cooperative breeder.

3. Consistent cooperation in a cichlid fish is caused by maternal and developmental effects rather than heritable genetic variation.

Adriana Maldonado-Chaparro

Title: Social and demographic consequences of changing environments. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 18 May 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. Experimental disturbances reveal group-level costs of social instability.

2. Transient LTRE analysis reveals the demographic and trait‐mediated processes that buffer population growth.

3. Group size affects social relationships in yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris).

Stephen T. Trumbo

Title: Social Life Among the Dead: Burying Beetles and the Evolution of Parental Care. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 25 May 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. Parental care. In: Insect Behavior: From Mechanisms to Ecological and Evolutionary Consequences.

2. Infanticide, sexual selection and task specialization in a biparental burying beetle.

3. Burying beetle parents adaptively manipulate information broadcast from a microbial community.

Lena Grinsted

Title: Using spiders to understand the evolution of group living. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 8 June 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. To be announced.

2. To be announced.

3. To be announced.

Nancy Solomon

Title: Inter- and Intraspecific Variability in the Prairie Vole Social System. Link to Recorded Talk.

Date: 15 June 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. Intraspecific variability in the social and genetic mating systems in prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster).

2. Dispatches from the field: sociality and reproductive success in prairie voles.

3. How does individual variation in sociality influence fitness in prairie voles?

Rebeca Rosengaus

Title: The Whole is Greater than the Sum of its Parts: Emergent Properties of Eusocial Insect Immunity.

Date: 22 June 2021

Suggested Readings:

1. Symbiont-derived beta-1,3-glucanases in a social insect: mutualism beyond nutrition.

2. The development of immunity in a social insect: Evidence for the group facilitation of disease resistance.

3. Ecology, Behavior and Evolution of Disease Resistance in Termites.