[asa] AAAS Symposium on Origins of Complex Societies in Primates and Humans

This morning's symposium on Origins of Complex Societes in Primates and Humans turned out to be mainly about primates and very little about humans. The symposium abstract quoted Darwin as saying "psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation." Later it claimed that "...emphasis will be placed on studies integrating genetics and endocrinology with behavior..."

It didn't live up to its billing but there were a few interesting observations that might be of interest to some of you.

Moderator: Robert D. Martin, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago

Robert W. Sussman, Washington U, St. Louis "A Comparative Overview of Primate Social Organization"
In primates, social structure is species-specific. Historically, the basic assumptions in studying these structures emphasized competition and aggression in the struggle for food and security. Females compete for food and males compete for females. Even cooperative behavior was studied through mechanisms such as kin selection and reciprocal altruism which are in essence also based on competition.
Sussman showed data to claim that this was an erroneous assumption. Agonistic behavior was far too rare, according to many studies he cited, to account for aggression and competition to be a dominant factor. He feels that a couple of decades of research has been lost due to this erroneous assumption. Instead, he suggests that cooperation and coordinated resource use are a much more accurate basis on which to study primate social interaction.
He claims that social interactions have physiological consequences and that neurotransmitters like seratonin (he mentioned the recent locust study) are biological factors in social interaction and can be selected for.
He met a fair degree of resistance in the Q&A from the audience but in the end seemed to get agreement that competition and aggression had been overemphasized while cooperation and coordination had been underestimated in studies of social interaction..

Susan C. Alberts, Duke U, Durham, NC "Inputs from Field Studies Integrating Genetics and Endeocrinology with Behavior"
Field studies of primates in the wild have made great strides in the last 10 years thanks to the development of new techniques. These methods finally enable the determination of paternity, which is remarkably difficult. They have also found ways to measure biological responses to emotional situations by analyzing fecal glucocorticoids. Some findings:
The social order in primates does not seem to lead to inbreeding. That is, all of the species have developed social structures that lead to sufficient gene flow to avoid a constrained gene pool.
Male dominance rank matters. Males invest in their offspring. Paternal presence seems to accelerate maturation of the offspring. Males make metachoices. In other words, while males are competitive, they are also parental and discriminating. This is consistent with the previous speaker in that competition may have been overblown in past models.
Social bonds with kin have evolutionary consequences. Infant survival is higher where there are more social bonds. Social events have physiological impact. For example, death of a relative increases fecal glucocorticoid levels. Thus the development of social structure has definite biological ties and is part of the selection process.

I didn't stay for the other talks in their entirety. Just enough to note the continued thread of social structure leading to physical changes. Species with a high degree of male competitiveness also have very high dimorphism. There were also some computer simulations purporting to show the evolutionary impact of various types of social interactions but I didn't find them very impressive.

I'm sure however that in future years to come this will become more focused on human development.

Randy

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Received on Sun Feb 15 22:35:41 2009