Fall 2022

Talks are Tuesdays at: 08:00 (PDT), 11:00 (EDT), 17:00 (CEST), 20:30 (IST), 01:00 (Wednesday, AEST)

Erica van de Waal

Title: Lab cognition going wild: field experiments on vervet monkeys. Recorded Talk.

Date: 06 September 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Processing of novel food reveal payoff and rank-biased social learning in a wild primate.

2. The pervasive role of social learning in primate lifetime development.

3. Potent social learning and conformity shape a wild primate’s foraging decisions.

Sthandiwe ‘Nomthi’ Khanyile

Title: YARFSE: Cuticle enhancing symbionts for a durable armour: how nutritional symbionts enhance protection against natural enemies in a grain pest beetle. Recorded Talk.

Date: 13 September 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Nutritional symbionts enhance structural defence against predation and fungal infection in a grain pest beetle.

2. Bachelor groups form due to individual choices or environmental disrupters in African striped mice.

3. Metabolic Cost of a Nutritional Symbiont Manifests in Delayed Reproduction in a Grain Pest Beetle.

Tshepiso Lesedi Majelantle

Title: YARFSE: Aggression, boldness, and exploration personality traits in the subterranean naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) disperser morphs. Recorded Talk.

Date: 13 September 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Aggression, boldness, and exploration personality traits in the subterranean naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) disperser morphs (ms in review, please contact author).

2. Increased population density and behavioural flexibility of African clawless otters (Aonyx capensis) in specific anthropogenic environments.

3. Monitoring the effects of land transformation on African clawless otters (Aonyx capensis) using fecal glucocorticoid metabolite concentrations as a measure of stress.

Celiwe A. Ngcamphalala

Title: YARFSE: Hot babblers: quantifying glucocorticoid responses to high temperatures. Recorded Talk.

Date: 13 September 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Experimental Manipulation of Air Temperature in Captivity Appears Unsuitable for Evaluating Fecal Glucocorticoid Metabolite Responses of Wild-Caught Birds to Heat Exposure.

2. Non-invasive monitoring of physiological stress in an afrotropical arid-zone passerine bird, the southern pied babbler.

3. Hot days are associated with short-term adrenocortical responses in a southern African arid-zone passerine bird.

Dan Rubenstein

Title: Horses, zebras, and wild asses: what one taxon can reveal about the causes and consequences of behavioral variation and flexibility. Recorded Talk.

Date: 20 September 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Multilevel organisation of animal sociality.

2. A new classification of mammalian uni-male multi-female groups based on the fundamental principles governing inter-and intrasexual relationships.

3. Divergent water requirements partition exposure risk to parasites in wild equids.

Hanja Brandl

Title: Stress and stress transmission in social groups. Recorded Talk.

Date: 27 September 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. The social transmission of stress in animal collectives.

2. Social buffering of stress in a group-living fish.

3. Family-transmitted stress in a wild bird.

Lucy Aplin

Title: Culture and Cultural Evolution in Birds. Recorded Talk.

Date: 04 October 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Culture and cultural evolution in birds: a review of the evidence.

2. Innovation and geographic spread of a complex foraging culture in an urban parrots.

3. Experimentally induced innovations lead to persistent traditions via conformity in wild birds.

Martin Surbeck

Title: Aspects of competition and cooperation in the genus Pan. Recorded Talk.

Date: 11 October 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Mothers matter! Maternal support, dominance status and mating success in male bonobos (Pan paniscus).

2. Males with a mother living in their group have higher paternity success in bonobos but not chimpanzees.

3. Characterization of Pan social systems reveals in-group/out-group distinction and out-group tolerance in bonobos.

Workshop

Title: Scientific and Statistical Inference in the Study of Social Evolution. Recorded Workshop.

Date: 18 October 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Retire statistical significance.

2. Why and how we should join the shift from significance testing to estimation.

3. Moving Biological Anthropology Research beyond P <0.05.

Filippo Aureli

Title: Challenges and opportunities of fission-fusion dynamics. Recorded Talk.

Date: 25 October 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Fission-fusion dynamics: new research frameworks.

2. Variation in communicative complexity in relation to social structure and organization in non-human primates.

3. Should I stay or should I go? How activity synchronization affects fission decisions.

Michael Ryan

Title: “Crazy Love” Nonlinearity and Irrationality in Mate Choice. Recorded Talk.

Date: 01 November 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Sexual selection and the ascent of women: Mate choice research since Darwin.

2. Darwin, sexual selection, and the brain.

3. Chapter 1 In: A Taste for the Beautiful: The Evolution of Attraction.

Valentin Amrhein

Title: Why and how we should join the shift from significance testing to estimation. Recorded Talk.

Date: 08 November 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Retire statistical significance.

2. Why and how we should join the shift from significance testing to estimation.

3. The earth is flat (p > 0.05): Significance thresholds and the crisis of unreplicable research.

Bibiana Rojas

Title: Living with the enemy: Communication, kin discrimination and cannibalism in poison frog larvae. Talk Postponed.

Date: 15 November 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Size-dependent aggression towards kin in a cannibalistic species.

2. Strange parental decisions: fathers of the dyeing poison frog deposit their tadpoles in pools occupied by large cannibals.

3. Mind the gap: Treefalls as drivers of parental trade‐offs.

Abel Bernadou

Title: Individual variability and division of labour in social insects.

Date: 22 November 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Lipid content influences division of labour in a clonal ant.

2. Stress and early experience underlie dominance status and division of labour in a clonal insect.

3. Diversity in identity: behavioral flexibility, dominance, and age polyethism in a clonal ant.

Mauricio Cantor

Title: Mechanisms and conservation of human-animal cooperation.

Date: 27 November 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. The ecology and evolution of human‐wildlife cooperation.

2. A dolphin‐human fishing cooperative in Brazil.

3. Reciprocal signaling in honeyguide-human mutualism.

4. Safeguarding human–wildlife cooperation.

Jane Waterman

Title: Nice guys come first: reproductive tactics in a non aggressive promiscuous squirrel.

Date: 06 December 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Social organization in a North African ground squirrel. Journal of Mammalogy.

2. Alternative tactics in male African ground squirrels: the impact of variable rainfall on condition and physiology.

3. Intraspecific variation in male mating strategies in an African ground squirrel. Ecology and Evolution.

Maria Oosthuizen

Title: Physiology and behaviour of African mole-rats over a continuum of sociality.

Date: 13 December 2022

Suggested Readings:

1. Telencephalic binding sites for oxytocin and social organisation: a comparative study of eusocial naked mole-rats and solitary Cape mole-rats.

2. Effects of laboratory housing on exploratory behaviour, novelty discrimination and spatial reference memory in a subterranean, solitary rodent, the Cape mole-rat (Georychus capensis).

3. Exploratory behaviour, spatial reference memory and neurogenesis in the social Damaraland mole-rat (Fukomys damarensis).