[QSB-grads] Fwd: [cis-unit-faculty] [cis-mts-announce] MTS Seminar November 6

[Paul Smaldino]

FYI. Pete Richerson is one of the pioneers (along with his collaborator
Robert Boyd) in the study of cultural evolution and gene-culture
coevolution.


__________________________________________________________
Paul Smaldino, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Cognitive and Information Sciences
Faculty Member, Quantitative and Systems Biology Graduate Group
University of California, Merced
http://www.smaldino.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Vanderschraaf via cis-mts-announce via cis-unit-faculty <
cis-unit-faculty at lists.cogsci.ucmerced.edu>
Date: Wed, Nov 1, 2017 at 10:15 AM
Subject: [cis-unit-faculty] [cis-mts-announce] MTS Seminar November 6
To: cis-mts-announce at cogsci.ucmerced.edu
Cc: Peter Vanderschraaf via cis-mts-announce <
cis-mts-announce at lists.cogsci.ucmerced.edu>



Hello All,

This coming Monday November 6 our MTS speaker is Peter Richerson,
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the Department of Environmental Science
and Policy at the University of California, Davis. This MTS Seminar will be
at 3:00-4:30 in KL 232, the Chancellor's Conference Room.

The title and abstract for Professor Richerson's seminar are below:

Human Evolution in the Plio-Pleistocene: A World Queerer Than We Supposed

Abstract


Large brains are energetically costly. In theory, large brains can pay
their overhead costs in spatially and temporally variable environments by
using them to adapt to variation using learning and social learning. Social
learning (culture) is adaptive over a range of time scales ranging from a
fraction of a generation to several tens of generations. At sufficiently
long time scales, genetic evolution can track variation well enough and at
sufficiently short ones social information is mostly outdated and
individual learning is more adaptive than social learning. We have known
for some time that the last glacial was characterized by a huge amount of
variation at millennial and submillenial time scales. A few high resolution
cores going back as far as 8 glacial cycles now exist. They suggest that
the amount of millennial and submillennial variation increased during each
successive glacial. Brain size and cultural complexity have increased in
parallel.


-- 
Peter Vanderschraaf

Professor of Philosophy
School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts
University of California, Merced
5200 North Lake Road
Merced, CA 95343

http://www.ucmerced.edu/faculty/facultybio.asp?facultyid=126

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