DSSS - The social genome in wild baboons

  • Date: Nov 8, 2024
  • Time: 03:00 PM - 04:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
  • Speaker: Prof. Jenny Tung
  • Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig
  • Location: NO.002, MPI für Intelligente Systeme
 DSSS - The social genome in wild baboons
In group-living primates, social interactions are important to evolution in two ways. First, they influence fitness outcomes for individuals: both social hierarchies and patterns of social affiliation can account for significant variance in measures of fertility and/or mortality. Second, social processes shape the structure and distribution of genetic variation within and between populations. They thus set the stage for evolution to act. Here, I will present work from my group that seeks to understand these phenomena, centered on a long-term field study of wild baboons in Kenya. At the “individual” level, I will discuss our efforts to understand whether social transmission of microbes contributes to the observed relationship between social interactions and life outcomes. Then, at the “population” level, I will introduce our work on hybridization and admixture, including our emerging understanding of how behavior affects this process.
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