Life Sciences Commons^™

Taxonomic Features And Comparison Of The Gut Microbiome From Two Edible Fungus-Farming Termites (Macrotermes Falciger, M. Natalensis) Harvested In The Vhembe District Of Limpopo, South Africa, Stephanie L. Schnorr, Courney A. Hofman, Shandukani R. Netschifhefhe, Frances D. Duncan, Tanvi P. Honap, Julie Lesnik, Cecil M. Lewis

Anthropology Faculty Research

Background Termites are an important food resource for many human populations around the world, and are a good supply of nutrients. The fungus-farming ‘higher’ termite members of Macrotermitinae are also consumed by modern great apes and are implicated as critical dietary resources for early hominins. While the chemical nutritional composition of edible termites is well known, their microbiomes are unexplored in the context of human health. Here we sequenced the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene of gut microbiota extracted from the whole intestinal tract of two Macrotermes sp. soldiers collected from the Limpopo region of South Africa. Results …

The Association Of Size Variation In The Dental Arch To Third Molar Agenesis For A Modern Population, Devin N. Williams

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The frequency with which individuals do not develop their third molars, or wisdom teeth, is increasing worldwide. This current topic of human evolution is relevant to the research of anthropologists, geneticists, dentists, and other researchers involved in the study of human dentition. Many explanations have been offered to account for the prevalence of molar agenesis including, evolutionary, environmental, and genetic theories. The purpose of this research project is to determine the frequency of third molar agenesis and investigate the relationship between third molar agenesis and maxillomandibular jaw dimensions in a sample of orthodontic patients. This research tests the hypotheses that: …

Neuron-Based Heredity And Human Evolution, Don M. Gash, Andrew S. Deane

Neuroscience Faculty Publications

It is widely recognized that human evolution has been driven by two systems of heredity: one DNA-based and the other based on the transmission of behaviorally acquired information via nervous system functions. The genetic system is ancient, going back to the appearance of life on Earth. It is responsible for the evolutionary processes described by Darwin. By comparison, the nervous system is relatively newly minted and in its highest form, responsible for ideation and mind-to-mind transmission of information. Here the informational capabilities and functions of the two systems are compared. While employing quite different mechanisms for encoding, storing and transmission …

Recent Origin Of Low Trabecular Bone Density In Modern Humans, Habiba Chirchir Phd, Tracy L. Kivell, Christopher B. Ruff, Jean-Jacques Hublin, Kristian J. Carlson, Bernhard Zipfel, Brian G. Richmond

Biological Sciences Faculty Research

Humans are unique, compared with our closest living relatives (chimpanzees) and early fossil hominins, in having an enlarged body size and lower limb joint surfaces in combination with a relatively gracile skeleton (i.e., lower bone mass for our body size). Some analyses have observed that in at least a few anatomical regions modern humans today appear to have relatively low trabecular density, but little is known about how that density varies throughout the human skeleton and across species or how and when the present trabecular patterns emerged over the course of human evolution. Here, we test the hypotheses that (i) …

Hunter-Gatherer Inter-Band Interaction Rates: Implications For Cumulative Culture, Kim R. Hill, Brian M. Wood, Jacopo A. Baggio, A. Magdalena Hurtado, Robert T. Boyd

Environment and Society Faculty Publications

Our species exhibits spectacular success due to cumulative culture. While cognitive evolution of social learning mechanisms may be partially responsible for adaptive human culture, features of early human social structure may also play a role by increasing the number potential models from which to learn innovations. We present interview data on interactions between same-sex adult dyads of Ache and Hadza hunter-gatherers living in multiple distinct residential bands (20 Ache bands; 42 Hadza bands; 1201 dyads) throughout a tribal home range. Results show high probabilities (5%–29% per year) of cultural and cooperative interactions between randomly chosen adults. Multiple regression suggests that …

How Culture Makes Us Human: Primate Social Evolution And The Formation Of Human Societies, Dwight W. Read

Dwight W Read

Cross-Sectional Dating Of Novel Haplotypes Of Herv-K 113 And Herv-K 115 Indicate These Proviruses Originated In Africa Before Homo Sapiens, Aashish Jha, Satish Pillai, Vanessa York, Elizabeth Sharp, Emily Storm, Douglas Wachter, Jeffrey Martin, Steven Deeks, Michael Rosenberg, Douglas Nixon, Keith Garrison

School of Science Faculty Works

The human genome, human endogenous retroviruses (HERV), of which HERV-K113 and HERV-K115 are the only known full-length proviruses that are insertionally polymorphic. Although a handful of previously published papers have documented their prevalence in the global population; to date, there has been no report on their prevalence in the United States population. Here, we studied the geographic distribution of K113 and K115 among 156 HIV-1+ subjects from the United States, including African Americans, Hispanics, and Caucasians. In the individuals studied, we found higher insertion frequencies of K113 (21%) and K115 (35%) in African Americans compared with Caucasians (K113 9% and …