Earth Day Talk

On April 22 (Earth Day!), join us in Dinwiddie 102 from 3:30 PM until 5:30 PM during Dr. Katherine Jack's lecture, "The power of long-term primate research: Lessons learned from 29 years with the capuchins of Costa Rica." Dr. Jack demonstrated the utility of long-term studies as a powerful research methodology. Beginning with a simple question, "why do presumably unrelated males cooperate?", she traces how following the fates of dispersing males transformed our understanding of capuchin social structure, and how each answer uncovered a deeper set of questions about when, how, and why some males become alphas and others do not. Drawing on an ever-expanding toolkit of behavioral, genetic, hormonal, and demographic data, she maps the arc of a research program that has grown from its earliest questions about male cooperation to investigating the chemical signatures of dominance, reflecting along the way on the remarkable and sometimes startling things (lethal aggression and cannibalism!) only long-term study can reveal.

We'd love to see you there. This is an intimate lecture with one of our beloved professors in the Anthropology department -- you don't want to miss it!