Human Evolutionary Ecology Students:

 

 Please fill out the biography form so that we can add you to the list of current students in the department.

 

 Wesley Allen-Arave
E-mail: allenara@unm.edu
Homepage: www.unm.edu/~allenara
Dissertation Committee: James Boone, Kim Hill, Jane Lancaster, Rich Sosis (University of Connecticut)
Areas of interest:

cooperation, altruism, social networks, kin relations, reputation, signaling theory, modern foragers, and evolutionary ecology
Dissertation Topic:

Allen-Arave's dissertation evaluates the explanatory power of recent theoretical works that have been advanced to account for unreciprocated generosity. These theoretical works reason that individuals aspire to perform altruistic acts that bestow reputations for generosity and attract favorable attention from observers by being viewed as either: 1) a beneficent partner for turn-taking exchanges of favors, 2) someone who commands access to resources and social prestige, or 3) some combination of these. Predictions are tested with data collected among Ache

forger-horticulturalists and charitable donors in Albuquerque to advance our understanding of the ability of these theories to provide a general framework for understanding altruistic acts that are not directly reciprocated.
Awards:

2004-2005 National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant; 2001-2002 New Mexico Graduate Scholars Award
Publications:

Allen-Arave, W., M. Gurven, and K. Hill. Is Nepotism Maintained by Kin Selection or Reciprocal Altruism: Evidence from Ache Food Transfers. Submitted to Evolution and Human Behavior.

 

2001 Gurven, M., W. Allen-Arave, K. Hill, and A. Hurtado. Reservation Food Sharing among the Ache of Paraguay. Human Nature 12 (4): 273-298.

 

2000 Gurven, M., W. Allen-Arave, K. Hill, and A. Hurtado. It's a Wonderful Life: Signaling Generosity Among the Ache of Paraguay. Special Issue: Evolution and Human Behavior. 21(4): 263-282.
Conferences:

2003 Allen-Arave, W. Is Altruism Competitive or Guarded: Evidence from Emergency Intervention Studies. Session: Cooperation and Game Theory. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 15th Annual Meeting, University of Nebraska Lincoln, June 7th.

 

2002 Allen-Arave, W., M. Gurven, K. Hill. Is Food Sharing Between Close Kin Due to Kin Selection or Reciprocal Altruism: Data Analyses of Ache Food Transfers. Session: Coalitions, Cooperation, and Sharing. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 14th Annual Meeting, Rutgers University, June 22nd.

 

2002 Allen-Arave, W. Are Ache Reservation Food Sharing Patterns at Odds with Economic Bargaining Theory: Sixth Annual Anthropology Graduate Student Union Spring Symposium, University of New Mexico, April 5th.

 

2002 Boone, J.L., L. Lundquist, and W. Allen-Arave. Is Honor Worth Dying For? Altruism, Social Class, and Survivorship in Titanic Disaster, April 1-15, 1912. University of New Mexico Anthropology Department Brown Bag, March 26th.

 

2001 Allen-Arave, W. Dying of Thirst: Stable Cercopithecine Female Dominance Hierarchies. Fifth Annual Anthropology Graduate Student Union Spring Symposium, University of New Mexico, March 23rd.

 

2000 Allen-Arave, W. Food Transfers Among Kin: Exploring Sahlin's Spheres of Reciprocities. Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies 48th Annual Conference, Santa Fe, January.

Keely S. Baca
E-mail: keely@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Jane B. Lancaster (Chair), Magdalena Hurtado, Ron Christensen, Diane Crumley
Areas of interest: breast cancer, cancer risk assessment, disease epidemiology, ethnic diversity and related health issues, early life growth and later life disease development
Dissertation Topic: Early life growth/development and risk of post-menopausal breast cancer

Jack Baker
E-mail: jabaker541@gmail.com 
Dissertation Committee: A. Magdalena Hurtado (Chair), Kim Hill, Osbjorn Pearson, Edward Bedrick (UNM--Statistics)
Areas of interest: Geographic: South Asia, Latin America

Topical: Behavioral and physiological ecology(nutritional physiology and metabolism); epidemiology and biodemography; hominine morphological evolution; quantitative modeling, research design and analysis.
Dissertation Topic: Dissertation Title: The Physiological Ecology of Thrifty Metabolism: Early-Life Signals of Energetic Scarcity and Child Body Composition in Developing and Modern Contexts

My research has primarily been in physiological ecology, where I've examined the effects of early-life exposures to indicators of energetic scarcity upon childhood and adolescent body composition in the US and rural Paraguay.
Publications: Baker J and Pearson OM (2005) Statistical Methods for Bioarchaeology: Applications of Age-adjustment and Logistic Regression to Comparisons of Skeletal Populations With Differing Age Structures. In press, Journal of Archaeological Science.
Conferences: November, 2003 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Annual Meeting, Depression in Primary Care: Linking Clinical and System Stragies Program Co-Presentor, Promotoras as Mental Health Practitioners in Primary Care: Reducing Economic, Cultural, and Linguistic Barriers to the Treatment of Depression in Community Health Centers. 

Spring 2000 Anthropology Graduate Student Union, Annual Symposium, University of New Mexico Type 2 Diabetes Among Indigenous Peoples. 

Spring, 2001 Anthropology Graduate Student Union, Annual Symposium, University of New Mexico New Perspectives on the Type 2 Diabetes Phenotype: Are Indigenous People Really More Susceptible?

Elizabeth Eadie
E-mail: eeadie@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Jane Lancaster
Areas of interest: I would like to study white-faced capuchins in Costa Rica. I'm interested in whether they use the vocalizations of other species to help locate food or avoid predators

Gil Greengross
E-mail: gili@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Kim Hill (chair), Geoffrey Miller, Steve Gangestad, Rod Martin
Areas of interest: Evolutionary psychology, mate selection, costly signaling theory, humor, cultural evolution.
Dissertation Topic: I am mainly interested in studying how humor evolved and looking at the differences in humor production and humor appreciation, between men and women, from sexual selection perspective. I plan to do my study both wiith the Ache in Paraguay and in contemporary society. I am also started researching the role of status in humor and the use of self deprecating humor.

Paul Hooper
E-mail: phooper@unm.edu 
Dissertation Committee: Hillard Kaplan, Steve Gangestad, Jim Boone, Geoffrey Miller
Areas of interest: I'm interested in integrating evolutionary ecology and evolutionary psychology approaches to human dominance, status, and prestige. I'm also interested in topics in cultural evolution and evolutionary theory.
Conferences: "Social Negotiation and the Cultural Evolution of Social Norms." AGSU Graduate Research Symposium, 2005.

Paul James
E-mail: pejames@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: A. Magdalena Hurtado (Chair), Carole Nagengast, Kim Hill, Kristine Tollestrup, Michael Kearney (UC Riverside)
Areas of interest: evolution of the immune system, allergies, public health & epidemiology, sustainable development, cultural and biological adaptation due to migration
Dissertation Topic: My current research aims to clarify the inverse relationship between early childhood disease exposures and the development of asthma within the Mixtec community living in Oaxaca, Tijuana and the United States. Past research has focused on child health in lowland Bolivia and Paraguay.

Yann Klimentidis
E-mail: yann@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Jim Boone and Geoffrey Miller
Areas of interest: human phenotypic and genetic diversity, population genetics, mate choice, ethnic conflict, cognition of ethnicity, behavioral genetics.
Dissertation Topic: I am interested in gauging how individuals deal with ethnic diversity with respect to cognition, and mate choice. I would like to use markers of genetic ancestry to examine the relationship between observed phenotype and measured genotype, and the relationship between shared ancestry and behavioral preferences.

Carol Lambourne
E-mail: calamb@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: A. Magdalena Hurtado (Chair), Jane Lancaster, Steve Gangestad (UNM Psychology), Gilbert Quintero (Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, Pediatrics)
Areas of interest: evolutionary models of child & adolescent development, life history theory, family composition & investment patterns, pubertal timing & psychosexual maturation, juvenile stress, infanticide
Dissertation Topic: Study of the trade-offs between sociosexual behavior and educational outcomes during adolescence in a contemporary multi-ethnic US population (Albuquerque, NM), and the impact that both parental and extended familial investment patterns have in buffering or exacerbating these decisions. The research is informed by anthropological knowledge of family organization and pre-adult behaviors amongst non-industrialized populations, including small-scale traditional societies, which provides insight into family structures more representative of human populations than the relatively novel environment now observed amongst post-industrialized western nations.

Aaron M. McCarty
E-mail: kokopelli2313@yahoo.com, amccarty@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Jim Boone
Areas of interest: evolution of human cognition, evolution of ritual and religion, altruism vs. opportunism, ecological sustainability; social change

Tanya Mueller
E-mail: swbaboon@yahoo.com
Dissertation Committee: Jane Lancaster (Co-Chair), Hillard Kaplan (Co-Chair), Jeff Froehlich, Jeanne Altmann
Areas of interest: adolescent development, reproductive ecology, baboons
Dissertation Topic: The Effects of Socio-Ecological Variables on the Timetable of Adolescent Maturation in Captive Female Baboons (Papio hamadryas anubis)

Jason Radak
E-mail: jayrad@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Jane Lancaster
Areas of interest: Northern Kenya
Dissertation Topic: Behavioral changes in humans during adrenarche, a period of development preceding puberty.

Jonathan Stieglitz
E-mail: j0nathan@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Hillard Kaplan (chair), Jane Lancaster, and Michael Gurven (UCSB)
Areas of interest: women's work, trade-offs between childcare and productivity, food sharing, and the evolution of religion, lowland bolivia

Amanda Veile
E-mail: mambo@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Hilllard Kaplan
Areas of interest: Maternal investment, maternal-infant health and nutrition, ecological immunology, lowland South America
Dissertation Topic: Maternal investment decisions: The timing and nature of infant supplementation with respect to local disease ecology in lowland Bolivian Tsimane communities

John D. Wagner
E-mail: wagner@unm.edu
Homepage: http://www.unm.edu/~wagner
Dissertation Committee:

Jane Lancaster, Hillard Kaplan, Steve Gangestad, Robert Glew, Steve Verney
Areas of interest: South America
Dissertation Topic: I investigate brain development, cognition, and aging among traditional and small-scale societies and interpret these patterns in light of ecological factors - primarily diet and disease - that influence these parameters

Robert Walker
E-mail: robwal@unm.edu
Homepage: http://www.unm.edu/~robwal
Areas of interest: human life history evolution, ontogeny, South America, subsistence activities, juvenile time allocation, optimality modeling
Dissertation Topic: Evolution of the human life history: Ontogeny and behavior in two South American indigenous populations

Jeff Winking
E-mail: jwinking@unm.edu
Dissertation Committee: Hillard Kaplan
Areas of interest: human life history, paternal investment, pair-bonds, mating systems
Dissertation Topic: I am conducting research to test various hypotheses concerning the evolution of paternal care and pair-bonds (marriage) in humans. I spent a year living and working with the Tsimane' of Bolivia as a member of a larger UNM research team and plan to complete my dissertation research there in the upcoming years.

Megan Workman
E-mail: workmanm@unm.edu
Areas of interest:

Cultural and socioeconomic influences on optimal timing of life history events, particularly on age at first reproduction among women in modern populations. Also, analyzing a possible arms race between the Media and its society of viewers in a game theoretical context.