biology

#530 Jeremy DeSilva - A Most Interesting Problem; Darwin’s Descent of Man (150th anniversary)

Oct 4, 2021

Dr. Jeremy DeSilva is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College. He is a paleoanthropologist, specializing in the locomotion of the first apes (hominoids) and early human ancestors (hominins). His particular anatomical expertise-- the human foot and ankle-- has contributed to our understanding of the origins and evolution of upright walking in the human lineage. He has studied wild chimpanzees in Western Uganda and early human fossils in Museums throughout Eastern and South Africa. From 1998-2003, Dr. DeSilva worked as an educator at the Boston Museum of Science and continues to be passionate about science education. He is the author of A Most Interesting Problem: What Darwin’s Descent of Man Got Right and Wrong about Human Evolution. More»
#518 Andrew Berry: The History of Evolutionary Biology (Pt. 2) - Genetics, and Speciation

Sep 6, 2021

Dr. Andrew Berry is a lecturer in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. He is an evolutionary biologist with a particular interest in Alfred Russel Wallace. His research combined field and laboratory methods to detect positive Darwinian selection (i.e. adaptive evolution) at the molecular level in natural populations. He has published two books: Infinite tropics: an Alfred Russel Wallace Anthology, with a foreword written by Stephen Jay Gould, and DNA: The Secret of Life with James Watson. More»
#517 James Costa: Darwin, Wallace, The Origin of Species, and The Descent of Man (150th anniversary)

Sep 3, 2021

Dr. James Costa is Executive Director of the Highlands Biological Station and Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Western Carolina University, where he has taught courses in genetics, entomology, evolution, and biogeography since 1996. His many interests include insect behavior and ecology, environmental history and philosophy, conservation biology, and the history of science. His research has focused in recent years on Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and the history of evolutionary thought. He has authored numerous research papers, reviews, magazine articles, and 7 books, including Darwin's Backyard: How Small Experiments Led to a Big Theory (W. W. Norton, 2017) — a finalist for the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Prize — and the co-edited volume An Alfred Russel Wallace Companion (Chicago, 2019). More»
#516 Nichola Raihani - The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World

Sep 2, 2021

Dr. Nichola Raihani is Professor of Evolution and Behavior at University College London. Her research considers the evolution of cooperation in nature. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 2019. Her first book is The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World. More»
#511 Cécile Sarabian: The Evolution of Disgust and Hygiene, and Conservation

Aug 20, 2021

Dr. Cécile Sarabian is a Postdoctoral researcher in Cognitive Ecology at Kyoto University. She investigates parasite avoidance behaviors and their effectiveness in non-human primates and other animals via field and lab experimentation/observations. She is generally interested in the origins of hygiene and disgust in humans and in the potential applications of disgust into the field of Conservation. More»
#507 Jessica Thompson: Human Evolution, and Our Impact on the Environment

Aug 12, 2021

Dr. Jessica Thompson is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale University. Dr. Thompson specializes in human evolution, and especially those aspects that can be revealed through the analysis of ancient animal bones found at archaeological sites (zooarchaeology). She leads the Malawi Ancient Lifeways and Peoples Project in Malawi, central Africa, where she has maintained a field site since 2009. This multidisciplinary work combines archaeological science, evolutionary theory, and hunter-gatherer ethnography to develop and interpret the first cultural and paleoenvironmental chronologies in the region that span the transition from the last Ice Age. Her other research, based on collaborative work in Ethiopia, targets the opposite end of the archaeological record, at its origin in the Pliocene. Dr. Thompson is PI of the Osteoarchaeology Laboratory at Yale University. More»
#495 Robin Crompton: The Evolution of Human Bipedalism

Jul 15, 2021

Dr. Robin Huw Crompton is professor of musculoskeletal biology at the University of Liverpool in the Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease. He has developed the Fossil Footprint Archive jointly with Matthew Bennett of Bournemouth University. More»
#494 Carole Hooven - T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us

Jul 12, 2021

Dr. Carole Hooven is Co-Director of Undergraduate Studies and Lecturer in Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Her research Interests include behavioral endocrinology and evolution of sex differences in humans (physiology, behavior and cognition). She is the author of T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us. More»
#493 Tim Clutton-Brock: The Evolution of Sociality, and Mammal Societies

Jul 9, 2021

Dr. Tim Clutton-Brock is Professor in the Department of Zoology at Cambridge University. He is known for his comparative studies of the behavioral ecology of mammals, particularly red deer and meerkats. He currently works in three main areas: The evolution of vertebrate breeding systems; Population regulation and the control of population stability in large mammals; Natural and sexual selection in natural populations. More»
#490 Mark Stoneking: Evolutionary Genetics, The Mitochondrial Eve, and Out of Africa Migrations

Jul 2, 2021

Dr. Mark Stoneking directs the Human Population History Group in the Department of Evolutionary Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. He is also Honorary Professor of Biological Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. Dr. Stoneking’s research uses molecular genetic approaches to address questions of anthropological interest concerning the origins, migrations, structure, and relationships of human populations. He, along with his doctoral advisor Allan Wilson and a fellow researcher Rebecca L. Cann, contributed to the Out of Africa Theory in 1987 by introducing the concept of Mitochondrial Eve, a hypothetical common mother of all living humans based on mitochondrial DNA. More»