<div dir="ltr">FYI. Pete Richerson is one of the pioneers (along with his collaborator Robert Boyd) in the study of cultural evolution and gene-culture coevolution. <div><br></div><div><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div style="font-size:12.8px"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1" color="#444444">__________________________________________________________</font></div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><font color="#444444" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Paul Smaldino, Ph.D.</font></div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><div><div style="font-size:16px"><font color="#444444" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Assistant Professor, </font><span style="color:rgb(68,68,68);font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:x-small">Cognitive and Information Sciences</span></div><div style="font-size:16px"><font color="#444444" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">Faculty Member, Quantitative and Systems Biology Graduate Group</font></div></div><div><font color="#444444" face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1">University of California, Merced<br></font></div></div><div style="font-size:12.8px"><a href="http://www.smaldino.com/" target="_blank"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif" size="1" color="#0000ff">http://www.smaldino.com</font></a></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Peter Vanderschraaf via cis-mts-announce via cis-unit-faculty</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:cis-unit-faculty@lists.cogsci.ucmerced.edu">cis-unit-faculty@lists.cogsci.ucmerced.edu</a>></span><br>Date: Wed, Nov 1, 2017 at 10:15 AM<br>Subject: [cis-unit-faculty] [cis-mts-announce] MTS Seminar November 6<br>To: <a href="mailto:cis-mts-announce@cogsci.ucmerced.edu">cis-mts-announce@cogsci.ucmerced.edu</a><br>Cc: Peter Vanderschraaf via cis-mts-announce <<a href="mailto:cis-mts-announce@lists.cogsci.ucmerced.edu">cis-mts-announce@lists.cogsci.ucmerced.edu</a>><br><br><br><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><br></div>Hello All,<br><br></div>This coming Monday November 6 our MTS speaker is Peter Richerson, Distinguished Professor Emeritus <span> of the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis.</span><span><span> This MTS Seminar will be at 3:00-4:30 in KL 232, the Chancellor's Conference Room.<br><br></span></span></div><span><span>The title and abstract for Professor Richerson's seminar are below:<br></span></span><div><div><div><br><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:rgb(68,84,106)">Human Evolution in the Plio-Pleistocene: A World Queerer Than We Supposed</span><br><br><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)">Abstract</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:rgb(31,73,125)"> </span></p>
<span style="font-size:11pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">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.</span><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="m_4030326078046091877gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div>Peter Vanderschraaf<br><br>Professor of Philosophy <br>School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts<br>University of California, Merced<br>5200 North Lake Road<br>Merced, CA 95343<br><br><a href="http://www.ucmerced.edu/faculty/facultybio.asp?facultyid=126" target="_blank">http://www.ucmerced.edu/<wbr>faculty/facultybio.asp?<wbr>facultyid=126</a></div></div></div>
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