Averting Lemur Extinctions Amid Madagascar's Political Crisis,
2014
Bristol Zoological Society, Bristol, UK
Averting Lemur Extinctions Amid Madagascar's Political Crisis, Christoph Schwitzer, Russell Mittermeier, Steig Johnson, Giuseppe Donati, Mitchell Irwin, Heather Peacock, Jonah Ratsimbazafy, Josia Razafindramanana, Edward E. Louis, Lounes Chikhi, Ian C. Colquhoun, Jennifer Tinsman, Ranier Dolch, Marni Lafleur, Stephen Nash, Erik Patel, Blanchard Randrianambinina, Tove Rasolofoharivelo, Patricia C. Wright
Anthropology Publications
The most threatened mammal group on Earth, Madagascar’s five endemic lemur families (lemurs are found nowhere else), represent more than 20% of the world’s primate species and 30% of family-level diversity. This combination of diversity and uniqueness is unmatched by any other country—remarkable considering that Madagascar is only 1.3 to 2.9% the size of the Neotropics, Africa, or Asia, the other three landmasses where nonhuman primates occur. But lemurs face extinction risks driven by human disturbance of forest habitats. We discuss these challenges and reasons for hope in light of site-specific, local actions proposed in an emergency conservation action plan.
Skeleton Found In A Rhode Island Cave, Possibility Of Lyme Disease,
2014
College of DuPage
Skeleton Found In A Rhode Island Cave, Possibility Of Lyme Disease, Tooba Ghafoor
2014 Honors Council of the Illinois Region Papers
A skeleton of a member of the Wampanoag tribe was recently found in a cave near the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. Examination of the skeleton revealed the individual was most likely a male in his late 40s. Six Amblyomma americanum and nine Xodes scapalaris ticks were found in the fur cloth of the individual. These ticks, as well as abnormalities of the skeleton, including a missing arm and broken rib, raise the possibility of the individual suffering and dying from Lyme disease. Carbon-14 dated the remains and ticks to the year 1600.
Primate Energy Eexpenditure And Life History,
2014
Hunter College
Primate Energy Eexpenditure And Life History, Herman Pontzer, David A. Raichlen, Adam D. Gordon, Kara K. Schroepfer-Walker, Brian Hare, Matthew C. O’Neill, Kathleen M. Muldoon
Dartmouth Scholarship
Humans and other primates are distinct among placental mammals in having exceptionally slow rates of growth, reproduction, and aging. Primates’ slow life history schedules are generally thought to reflect an evolved strategy of allocating energy away from growth and reproduction and toward somatic investment, particularly to the development and maintenance of large brains. Here we examine an alternative explanation: that primates’ slow life histories reflect low total energy expenditure (TEE) (kilocalories per day) relative to other placental mammals. We compared doubly labeled water measurements of TEE among 17 primate species with similar measures for other placental mammals. We found that …
A Life History Perspective On Skin Cancer And The Evolution Of Skin Pigmentation,
2014
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
A Life History Perspective On Skin Cancer And The Evolution Of Skin Pigmentation, Daniel L. Osborne, Raymond B. Hames
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
The ancestral state of human skin pigmentation evolved in response to high ultraviolet radiation (UVR) stress. Some argue that pigmentation evolved to limit folate photolysis, therein limiting neural tube defects. Pigmentation also protects against sunburn which decreases the efficiency of sweating and potentiates skin infection. Pigmentation increases the efficacy of skin as a barrier to infection. Skin cancer has been rejected or minimized as a selective pressure because it is believed to have little or no effect on mortality during reproductive years. This argument ignores evidence of human longevity as a derived life history trait and the adaptive value of …
Beyond Donors And Dollars: An Ethnographic Case Study Of International Aid And Its Agents In Mozambique,
2014
University of Denver
Beyond Donors And Dollars: An Ethnographic Case Study Of International Aid And Its Agents In Mozambique, Carly Amanda Santoro
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
In Mozambique, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) work mainly in Mozambique's rural areas, with programs dedicated to the prevention of infectious diseases, education, access to food and clean water, gender equity, and many other concerns. Yet despite these efforts, Mozambican populations are critical of NGOs' missions and practices, and Mozambique remains one of the poorest countries in the world. To explore these issues concerning contradictions in aid in Mozambique, I employ the concept of cultural capital, which refers to cultural practices, perspectives, and beliefs in relation to one's ability to access symbolic and material goods. My thesis examines the degree to …
An Overview Of The Evidence For Tuberculosis From Ancient Egypt,
2014
The American University in Cairo AUC
An Overview Of The Evidence For Tuberculosis From Ancient Egypt, Lisa Sabbahy Dr.
Faculty Book Chapters
The study of human remains from ancient Egypt and Nubia has captured the imagination of many people for generations, giving rise to the discipline of palaeopathology and fostering bioarchaeological research. This book contains 16 papers that cover material presented at a workshop entitled 'Palaeopathology in Egypt and Nubia: A Century in Review,' held at the Natural History Museum, London (August 29-30, 2012), which formed part of a three-year research project, 'Sir Grafton Elliot Smith: Palaeopathology and the Archaeological Survey of Nubia.' The papers explore the subject of palaeopathology from its beginnings in the early 1900s through to current research themes …
The “Female Fertility–Social Stratification–Hypergyny” Hypothesis Of Male Homosexual Preference: Factual, Conceptual And Methodological Errors In Barthes Et Al. [Commentary],
2014
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, Toronto
The “Female Fertility–Social Stratification–Hypergyny” Hypothesis Of Male Homosexual Preference: Factual, Conceptual And Methodological Errors In Barthes Et Al. [Commentary], Doug P. Vanderlaan, Zachary H. Garfield, Melissa J. Garfield, Jean-Baptiste Leca, Paul L. Vasey, Raymond B. Hames
Department of Anthropology: Faculty Publications
Barthes, Godelle, and Raymond (2013, Evolution and Human Behavior, 34, 155–163) proposed a hypothesis to (1) identify the process by which genes influencing male homosexual preference (MHP) are passed on over evolutionary time, and (2) account for why life-course persistent MHP is restricted to humans. According to their hypothesis, certain genes lower reproductive success in male carriers by causing MHP, but these same genes promote fertility in female carriers (i.e., sexual antagonism). Barthes et al. proposed that the female carriers of genes for MHP have physical cues of fertility (i.e., beauty) that help them marry up the social class …
A Biocultural Perspective On The Transition To Agriculture In Ukraine,
2014
University at Albany, State University of New York
A Biocultural Perspective On The Transition To Agriculture In Ukraine, Jordan Kenneth Karsten
Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)
The development of agriculture and its spread around the globe is one of the most consequential events in the history of our species. The transition to agriculture is associated with many cultural developments, such as craft specialization, urbanization, and the creation of social hierarchies. Many social theorists believe that these changes associated with the adoption of farming were beneficial to the human condition, however, not all agree. The goal of this research is to evaluate the impact of the adoption of agriculture on human health. To do this, bioarchaeological analysis is employed, comparing the skeletal and dental health of Mesolithic …
The Evolutionary Fitness Of Personality Traits In A Small-Scale Subsistence Society,
2014
University of California, Santa Barbara
The Evolutionary Fitness Of Personality Traits In A Small-Scale Subsistence Society, Michael Gurven, Christopher Von Rueden, Jonathan Stieglitz, Hillard Kaplan, Daniel Eid Rodriguez
ESI Publications
"Personality, or “behavioral syndromes”, are relatively stable dispositional traits and behaviors that have now been identified in a myriad of social species (Gosling, 2001; Sih et al., 2004), and with clear consequences on fitness (Smith & Blumstein, 2008). The canalization of personality during development and relative stability thereafter, despite varying circumstances over the life course that might otherwise favor greater plasticity, is an important problem attracting much theoretical and empirical attention (Dall et al., 2004; Dingemanse et al., 2010). Further, personality is highly heritable, yet how heritable genetic variation in personality traits is maintained over generations remains another conundrum (Buss …
Diet At Medieval Alytus, Lithuania: Stable Carbon And Nitrogen Isotope Analysis Of Bone And Dentin Collagen,
2014
University of Central Florida
Diet At Medieval Alytus, Lithuania: Stable Carbon And Nitrogen Isotope Analysis Of Bone And Dentin Collagen, Katie Whitmore
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The Baltic region was a vibrant center of power and economic prosperity in medieval Europe; Lithuania in particular. Until now, little stable isotopic analysis has been utilized to assess diet in this region during this time period. The aim of this study was to undertake a preliminary assessment of the composition of diet at late medieval Alytus (late 14th to early 18th centuries) from bone (N=35) and dentin (N=38) collagen samples. The stable carbon isotopic data suggest a diet primarily comprised of C3 plants such as barley, rye, wheat, and flax, and animals consuming C3 plants. The stable nitrogen isotopic …
Archaeological Geophysics, Excavation, And Ethnographic Approaches Toward A Deeper Understanding Of An Eighteenth Century Wichita Site,
2013
University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
Archaeological Geophysics, Excavation, And Ethnographic Approaches Toward A Deeper Understanding Of An Eighteenth Century Wichita Site, Michael Don Carlock
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This research exemplifies a multidirectional approach to an archaeological interpretation of an eighteenth century Wichita village and fortification located on the Red River bordering Oklahoma and Texas. A battle that is believed to have occurred at the Longest site (34JF1) in 1759 between Spanish colonials and a confederation of Native Americans led to several Spanish primary documents describing the people that lived there, the fortification and surrounding village, and of course the battle itself. Investigation of the Longest site (34JF1) in Oklahoma presents a remarkable opportunity to combine extensive historical research, archaeological prospecting using geophysics, and traditional excavation techniques in …
Concluding Remarks: What's In A Name? "Negritos" In The Context Of The Human Prehistory Of Southeast Asia,
2013
School of Anthropology, University of Oxford and St. Cross College, Oxford, UK
Concluding Remarks: What's In A Name? "Negritos" In The Context Of The Human Prehistory Of Southeast Asia, Stanley J. Ulijaszek
Human Biology
The "negrito" hypothesis posits that various indigenous groups throughout Island and Mainland Southeast Asia have a shared phenotype due to common descent from a putative ancestral population, representing a preagricultural substrate of humanity in the region. This has been examined and tested many times in the past, with no clear resolution. With many new resources to hand, the articles in this volume reexamine this hypothesis in a range of different ways. The evidence presented in this double issue of Human Biology speaks more against the category of "negrito" than for it. While populations with the negrito phenotype form a small …
The Australian Barrineans And Their Relationship To Southeast Asian Negritos: An Investigation Using Mitochondrial Genomics,
2013
PERAHU, School of Humanities, Gold Coast Campus, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
The Australian Barrineans And Their Relationship To Southeast Asian Negritos: An Investigation Using Mitochondrial Genomics, Peter Mcallister, Nano Nagle, Robert John Mitchell
Human Biology
The existence of a short-statured Aboriginal population in the Far North Queensland (FNQ) rainforest zone of Australia’s northeast coast and Tasmania has long been an enigma in Australian anthropology. Based on their reduced stature and associated morphological traits such as tightly curled hair, Birdsell and Tindale proposed that these "Barrinean" peoples were closely related to "negrito" peoples of Southeast Asia and that their ancestors had been the original Pleistocene settlers of Sahul, eventually displaced by taller invaders. Subsequent craniometric and blood protein studies, however, have suggested an overall homogeneity of indigenous Australians, including Barrineans. To confirm this finding and determine …
Making Friends In The Rainforest: "Negrito" Adaptation To Risk And Uncertainty,
2013
School of Social Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia
Making Friends In The Rainforest: "Negrito" Adaptation To Risk And Uncertainty, Lye Tuck-Po
Human Biology
The so-called negritos adapt not just to a tropical forest environment but also to an environment characterized by perturbations and fluctuations. As with other hunter-gatherers in the region and, indeed, throughout the world, they use both social and ecological methods to enhance their chances of survival in this changing environment: socially, they have developed networks of trading and marriage partners; ecologically, they maintain patches of key resources that are available for future harvesting. As evidenced in the case of the Batek (Orang Asli), patterns of forest structure and composition are sometimes direct outcomes of intentional resource concentration and enrichment strategies. …
Why Have The Peninsular "Negritos" Remained Distinct?,
2013
Centre for Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Why Have The Peninsular "Negritos" Remained Distinct?, Geoffrey Benjamin
Human Biology
The primary focus of this article is on the so-called negritos of Peninsular Malaysia and southern Thailand, but attention is also paid to other parts of Southeast Asia. I present a survey of current views on the "negrito" phenotype—is it single or many? If the phenotype is many (as now seems likely), it must have resulted from parallel evolution in the several different regions where it has been claimed to exist. This would suggest (contrary to certain views that have been expressed on the basis of very partial genetic data) that the phenotype originated recently and by biologically well-authenticated processes …
Terror From The Sky: Unconventional Linguistic Clues To The Negrito Past,
2013
University of Hawai‘i, Honolulu, Hawai‘i
Terror From The Sky: Unconventional Linguistic Clues To The Negrito Past, Robert Blust
Human Biology
Within recorded history. most Southeast Asian peoples have been of "southern Mongoloid" physical type, whether they speak Austroasiatic, Tibeto-Burman, Austronesian, Tai-Kadai, or Hmong-Mien languages. However, population distributions suggest that this is a post-Pleistocene phenomenon and that for tens of millennia before the last glaciation ended Greater Mainland Southeast Asia, which included the currently insular world that rests on the Sunda Shelf, was peopled by short, dark-skinned, frizzy-haired foragers whose descendants in the Philippines came to be labeled by the sixteenth-century Spanish colonizers as "negritos," a term that has since been extended to similar groups throughout the region. There are three …
Time And Place In The Prehistory Of The Aslian Languages,
2013
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Time And Place In The Prehistory Of The Aslian Languages, Michael Dunn, Nicole Kruspe, Niclas Burenhult
Human Biology
The Aslian language family, located in the Malay Peninsula and southern Thai Isthmus, consists of four distinct branches comprising some 18 languages. These languages predate the now dominant Malay and Thai. The speakers of Aslian languages exhibit some of the highest degree of phylogenetic and societal diversity present in Mainland Southeast Asia today, among them a foraging tradition particularly associated with locally ancient, Pleistocene genetic lineages. Little advance has been made in our understanding of the linguistic prehistory of this region or how such complexity arose. In this article we present a Bayesian phylogeographic analysis of a large sample of …
Kinship Matters: Structures Of Alliance, Indigenous Foragers, And The Austronesian Diaspora,
2013
University of Hawai‘i-West O‘ahu, Kapolei, Hawai‘i
Kinship Matters: Structures Of Alliance, Indigenous Foragers, And The Austronesian Diaspora, James West Turner
Human Biology
The study of kinship systems has direct relevance for the field of human genetics and the study of microevolution in human populations. Some types of postmarital residence rules—rules requiring a married couple to live with or near relatives of the husband or wife—will have consequences for the distribution of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome lineages. Rules that proscribe or encourage marriage with close kin will also have consequences for allele frequency. A preference for marrying at a distance, both socially and geographically, creates alliances that can have survival value for individuals and groups in an environment of periodic or unpredictable …
Who Are The Philippine Negritos? Evidence From Language,
2013
University of Hawai‘i
Who Are The Philippine Negritos? Evidence From Language, Lawrence A. Reid
Human Biology
This article addresses the linguistic evidence from which details about Philippine "negritos" can be inferred. This evidence comes from the naming practices of both negrito and non-negrito peoples, from which it can be inferred that many negrito groups have maintained a unique identity distinct from other groups since the dispersal of Malayo-Polynesian languages. Other names, such as Dupaningan and Dumagat, reference locations, from which it is assumed the negritos left after contact with Malayo-Polynesian people. Evidence also comes from the relative positions of negrito groups vis-à-vis other groups within the subfamily with which their current language can be grouped. Many …
Evolution Of The Pygmy Phenotype: Evidence Of Positive Selection From Genome-Wide Scans In African, Asian, And Melanesian Pygmies,
2013
Department of Anthropology, University College London, London, UK
Evolution Of The Pygmy Phenotype: Evidence Of Positive Selection From Genome-Wide Scans In African, Asian, And Melanesian Pygmies, Andrea Bamberg Migliano, Irene Gallego Romero, Mait Metspalu, Matthew Leavesley, Luca Pagani, Tiago Antao, Da-Wei Huang, Brad T. Sherman, Katharine Siddle, Clarissa Scholes, Georgi Hudjashov, Elton Kaitokai, Avis Babalu, Maggie Belatti, Alex Cagan, Bryony Hopkinshaw, Colin Shaw, Mari Nelis, Ene Metspalu, Reedik Mägi, Richard A. Lempicki, Richard Villems, Marta Mirazon Lahr, Toomis Kivisild
Human Biology
Human pygmy populations inhabit different regions of the world, from Africa to Melanesia. In Asia, short-statured populations are often referred to as "negritos." Their short stature has been interpreted as a consequence of thermoregulatory, nutritional, and/or locomotory adaptations to life in tropical forests. A more recent hypothesis proposes that their stature is the outcome of a life history trade-off in high-mortality environments, where early reproduction is favored and, consequently, early sexual maturation and early growth cessation have coevolved. Some serological evidence of deficiencies in the growth hormone/insulin-like growth factor axis have been previously associated with pygmies’ short stature. Using genome-wide …
