CASCB talk: The social determinants of survival from cradle to the grave: a case study in wild baboons
Time
Monday, 22. May 2023
15:30 - 16:45
Location
ZT 702 and online
Organizer
CASCB
Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Jenny Tung, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
This event is part of an event series „Seminar Series Summer Semester 2023“.
The social determinants of survival from cradle to the grave: a case study in wild baboons
Field studies of natural mammal populations present a powerful opportunity to investigate the social determinants of health and fitness using fine-grained observations of known individuals across the life course. Here, I will summarize our emerging understanding of this process in the wild baboons of the Amboseli ecosystem in Kenya, based on collaborative work by the groups of Susan Alberts (Duke University), Beth Archie (University of Notre Dame), and my own. I will review the strong evidence that both exposure to early life adversity and affiliative ties in adulthood influence survival, and that these effects are unlikely to represent predictive adaptive responses. I will also discuss potential social, physiological, and molecular mediators that connect early life to later life outcomes. Together, our work suggests largely independent, often sex-specific, and frequently distinct effects of different sources of early adversity, which combine to influence all-cause mortality via multiple weak mediators.
Jenny Tung is the Director of the Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology at Duke University. Jenny joined Duke University in 2012 after completing her post-doctoral training in the University of Chicago Department of Human Genetics and her PhD training in the Duke Biology department. She founded the Department of Primate Behavior and Evolution at MPI-EVA in 2022. Research in the department focuses on the intersection between behaviour, social structure, and genes. Jenny’s lab is particularly interested in how the social environment influences gene regulation, population genetic structure, and health and survival across the life course. We primarily pursue these questions in nonhuman primates and other social mammals, both wild and captive.
