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The Biology of Same-Sex Attraction

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Sergey Gavrilets and two colleagues published a study in the Quarterly Review of Biology on the biology of same-sex attraction, that has sparked considerable coverage in both scientific and popular media. Publications and websites as diverse as Time, US News & World Report, Popular Science, Cosmos, and the New York Daily News have reported the findings.

Read the UT Quest story that summarizes the study, or read the full article (citation below).

Homosexuality as a Consequence of Epigenetically Canalized Sexual Development.  William R. Rice, Urban Friberg and Sergey Gavrilets. The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 87, No. 4 (December 2012), pp. 343-368. Article DOI: 10.1086/668167

 

Gavrilets Paper in Nature Communications

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Sergey Gavrilets recently had paper on “altruistic bullies” come out in Nature Communications:
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140326/ncomms4526/full/ncomms4526.html

The work has been discussed in Time Magazine: “Science Proves It: Greed Is Good”
http://time.com/41680/greed-is-good-science-proves/

and in Science Daily: “Altruistic side of aggressive greed”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140326092600.htm

as well as in several international venues.  Congrats Sergey!

Complex Societies in PNAS

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Sergey Gavrilets has a new open-access paper in PNAS, which is getting a great deal of media attention in places like Nature (links below).  The paper is entitled, “War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies.”

Turchin, P; Currie, TE; Turner, EAL; Gavrilets, S.  2013.  War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies. PNAS. doi:10.1073/pnas.1308825110.

Significance: How did human societies evolve from small groups, integrated by face-to-face cooperation, to huge anonymous societies of today? Why is there so much variation in the ability of different human populations to construct viable states? We developed a model that uses cultural evolution mechanisms to predict where and when the largest-scale complex societies should have arisen in human history. The model was simulated within a realistic landscape of the Afroeurasian landmass, and its predictions were tested against real data. Overall, the model did an excellent job predicting empirical patterns. Our results suggest a possible explanation as to why a long history of statehood is positively correlated with political stability, institutional quality, and income per capita.

Press Coverage:

Austrian Tribune Nature
The Conversation Pacific Standard
El Mundo Popular Mechanics
Huffington Post Science World Report
Los Angeles Times Smithsonian
National Monitor Wired

NSF Graduate Fellowships – Updated (again)

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Five Six current or incoming EEB students were awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowships or honorable mentions:

Awards:

Honorable mentions:
Update: Also note that Kelly Rooker, a graduate student in math who is in EEB faculty member Sergey Gavrilets‘ lab, was also awarded an NSF fellowship.

Update 2: Angela Chuang has decided to enter EEB in the fall; numbers have been updated to reflect this.

In the areas of ecology and systematics, EEB tied for 12th 9th place out of all universities in awards and honorable mentions (note that UTK EEB is the only department broken out; all other numbers were summed across all departments in other universities). In these areas EEB had more students honored than Harvard, Duke, Stanford, Yale, and many other universities with strong equivalent departments. Below is a table of EEB and all other institutions with any awards or honorable mentions ecology or systematics. Across all areas and departments, UTK got 12 awards and honorable mentions in total.

Institution Awards + Honorable Mentions
University of California-Davis 16
University of Washington 13
University of California-Berkeley 9
University of California-Santa Cruz 9
Cornell University 8
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities 8
Princeton University 7
Texas A & M University Main Campus 7
University of Tennessee Knoxville, all departments 7
University of Tennessee Knoxville, EEB only 6
Colorado State University 6
Michigan State University 6
University of Florida 6
University of Arizona 5
University of Colorado at Boulder 5
University of Georgia 5
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 5
Utah State University 5
Indiana University 4
Oregon State University 4
University of California-Santa Barbara 4
University of Chicago 4
University of Michigan Ann Arbor 4
University of Wisconsin-Madison 4
Pennsylvania State Univ University Park 3
Stanford University 3
University of California-Los Angeles 3
University of California-San Diego 3
University of Montana 3
University of South Florida 3
Yale University 3
Arizona State University 2
Harvard University 2
Montana State University 2
Oklahoma State University 2
Purdue University 2
SUNY at Stony Brook 2
University of California-Irvine 2
University of Hawaii 2
University of Idaho 2
University of Illinois at Chicago 2
University of Kansas Main Campus 2
University of Missouri-Columbia 2
University of Notre Dame 2
University of Pittsburgh 2
University of Texas at Austin 2
University of Utah 2
University of Vermont &amp State Agricultural College 2
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 2
American Museum Natural History 1
Boise State University 1
Boston University 1
Central Michigan University 1
College of William and Mary 1
Dartmouth College 1
Emory University 1
Florida Gulf Coast University 1
Florida International University 1
Florida State University 1
Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology – University of Hawaii Manoa 1
Humboldt State University 1
Humboldt State University Foundation 1
Kent State University 1
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1
Miami University 1
Missouri State University 1
North Carolina State University 1
North Dakota State University Fargo 1
Old Dominion University 1
Portland State University 1
Rutgers University New Brunswick 1
Salisbury University 1
San Francisco State University 1
San Jose State University 1
Syracuse University 1
Texas State University – San Marcos 1
Trustees of Boston University 1
Tufts University 1
University of Alaska Fairbanks Campus 1
University of California-Riverside 1
University of Central Florida 1
University of Connecticut 1
University of Maine 1
University of Massachusetts Amherst 1
University of Nevada Reno 1
University of New Hampshire 1
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1
University of North Carolina at Charlotte 1
University of Oklahoma Norman Campus 1
University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras 1
University of Virginia Main Campus 1
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 1

Institutions with no awards or honorable mentions not listed.

Note that for this table, ecology and systematics correspond to NSF categories “Life Sciences – Ecology”, “Life Sciences – Systematic Biology”.

Epigenetics and homosexuality

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A recent paper by Bill Rice, Urban Fridberg, and UTK EEB faculty member Sergey Gavrilets, proposes that epigenetic factors, the switching on or off of genes by factors other than other genes, may lead to homosexuality. This work arises from a working group at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS), which is on the UT Knoxville campus. For more information, see the press release and the original article.

Gavrilets’ work on monogamy featured in Slate

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UTK Distinguished Professor Sergey Gavrilets’ work on the evolution of monogamy, published in PNAS, has been featured in an article in the online magazine Slate. In his model, low-ranked males begin providing resources to females, who begin selecting them rather than higher-ranked males. Such behavior then becomes optimal for males higher and higher up the hierarchy.

Gavrilets’ work on monogamy featured in Slate

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UTK Distinguished Professor Sergey Gavrilets’ work on the evolution of monogamy, published in PNAS, has been featured in an article in the online magazine Slate. In his model, low-ranked males begin providing resources to females, who begin selecting them rather than higher-ranked males. Such behavior then becomes optimal for males higher and higher up the hierarchy.

Evolution and Bullying

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UTK Distinguished Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics Sergey Gavrilets recently published a paper in PNAS on the evolutionary origins of egalitarianism.  It shows why individuals may be selected for interfering in a conflict between a bully and a victim on the side of the victim.

Abstract:
The evolutionary emergence of the egalitarian syndrome is one of the most intriguing unsolved puzzles related to the origins of modern humans. Standard explanations and models for cooperation and altruism—reciprocity, kin and group selection, and punishment—are not directly applicable to the emergence of egalitarian behavior in hierarchically organized groups that characterized the social life of our ancestors. Here I study an evolutionary model of group-living individuals competing for resources and reproductive success. In the model, the differences in fighting abilities lead to the emergence of hierarchies where stronger individuals take away resources from weaker individuals and, as a result, have higher reproductive success. First, I show that the logic of within-group competition implies under rather general conditions that each individual benefits if the transfer of the resource from a weaker group member to a stronger one is prevented. This effect is especially strong in small groups. Then I demonstrate that this effect can result in the evolution of a particular, genetically controlled psychology causing individuals to interfere in a bully–victim conflict on the side of the victim. A necessary condition is a high efficiency of coalitions in conflicts against the bullies. The egalitarian drive leads to a dramatic reduction in within-group inequality. Simultaneously it creates the conditions for the emergence of inequity aversion, empathy, compassion, and egalitarian moral values via the internalization of behavioral rules imposed by natural selection. It also promotes widespread cooperation via coalition formation.

It has also garnered widespread press coverage:

Los Angeles Times: Evolution stands up to bullies
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-stop-bullying-20120813,0,7921942.story?track=rss
 
Health: Fight the Power: Standing Up to Bullies Benefits Us All
http://news.health.com/2012/08/13/standing-up-to-bullies-benefits-society-study-suggests/
 
Knoxville New Sentinel: Science and bullying: Why we are programmed to help others
 
Tennessee Today: UT, NIMBioS Study Finds Bullies Squelched When Bystanders Intervene
http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2012/08/13/ut-nimbios-study-bullies-squelched/
 
Decoded Science "Egalitarian Drives as a Response to Bullying"
https://evolution-institute.org/egalitarian-drives-as-a-response-to-bullying/


Discover Magazine: Against the Übermensch 
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/08/against-the-ubermensch/
 
Examiner.com: Bullying intervention is genetically evolutionary 'right thing to do’
http://www.examiner.com/article/bullying-intervention-is-genetically-evolutionary-right-thing-to-do
 
United Press International: Fighting bullies pushed evolution
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/08/14/Study-Fighting-bullies-pushed-evolution/UPI-73181344980881/?spt=hs&or=sn

Piteå-Tidningen (Sweden): Thus arose the sense of equality
 
French Tribune: Standing against Bullying is in Genes 
 
Folha de S. Paulo (Brasil): O altruísmo egoísta
http://teoriadetudo.blogfolha.uol.com.br/2012/08/14/o-altruismo-egoista/
 
Korea Herald: Fighting bullies pushed evolution
http://view.koreaherald.com/kh/view.php?ud=20120815000175&cpv=0


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http://www.ria.ru/science/20120813/722911416.htm
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