Join us for a conversation with Elizabeth Archie, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame, and Chelsea Weibel, PhD Student at the University of Notre Dame. If an individual can anticipate an early death, should they also “live fast”? Fast reproduction is often proposed to be an adaptive response to harsh conditions in early life because early adversity predicts shorter lifespans. Individuals who speed up reproduction after experiencing early adversity might therefore have higher fitness than those who do not. Using long-term data on natural population of baboons in Amboseli, Kenya, we tested if fast reproduction offers lifetime fitness advantages to females. Contrary to several influential hypotheses, females who experienced early adversity did not improve their fitness if they sped up reproduction. Our results raise doubts that accelerated reproduction is an adaptive response to early adversity in long lived, slow-reproducing species. Sign up here for the meeting link.
Join us for a special Club EvMed where we’ll be highlighting some of the exciting work done by postdoctoral researchers in the field of evolutionary medicine. We will hear 12-minute research talks from Kyle Card, Liz Lange, and Federica Pierini (see abstracts below). There will be a brief Q&A period at the end of each talk, plus breakout rooms after all 3 talks to allow for more in depth conversations with the speakers. Sign up here for the meeting link.
“The effect of population size, mutation rate, and genetic background on the evolution of antibiotic resistance” by Kyle Card, Cleveland Clinic The evolution of antibiotic resistance is a serious and growing problem. The ability to predict a pathogen’s capacity to evolve resistance is therefore a critical public-health goal. In previous work, we found that differences between genetic backgrounds can sometimes lead to unpredictable responses in phenotypic resistance and influence its genetic basis by channeling evolution down particular mutational paths. However, it is still not clear how background interacts with other factors, including population size and mutation rate to influence resistance evolution. To address this issue, we are combining theory with an experimental examination of a time-series of E. coli strains isolated from a population that evolved increases in both population size and mutation rate during a long-term evolution experiment (LTEE).
“Female-female social bonds mediate the relationship between early life adversity and lifespan in wild baboons, but female-male social bonds do not” by Liz Lange, Duke University Adversities experienced during early life and adult social environments can have profound effects on human health and survival. However, it is unclear if experiences during early life and adulthood exhibit independent effects on survival, or instead if these processes are linked such that adverse early experiences are strongly coupled with dysfunction in adult social relationships, which in turn are strongly coupled with decreased lifespan. In this study we used longitudinal data on 199 wild adult female baboons from the Amboseli ecosystem in Kenya to determine the links between early life adversity, adult social bonds, and adult survival outcomes. We find that early adversity and social isolation from both males and females reduce survival, but only female-female social bonds link early life adversity to reduced survival. Our results suggest that the timing of effects (e.g., the effect of early adversity on social bonds and social bonds on survival) are crucial to determining the links between these processes and should be considered in human studies of adverse childhood experiences.
“Exploring immunogenetic diversity in historical human populations” by Federica Pierini, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History The highly polymorphic genes of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system play a key role in adaptive immunity. Pathogen-mediated selection is proposed to be one of the major factors affecting the genetic variability at those genes, but our knowledge is so far based on information acquired from the study of present-day human populations. The investigation of ancient HLA genes in historical populations could shed further light on mechanisms of pathogen-mediated selection in humans. I will first show our novel aDNA-optimized pipeline for low-coverage and low-quality shotgun sequence data and follow with two examples of its applicability. The approach has been successfully applied to a dataset of Late Neolithic samples from a collective burial in Niedertiefenbach (Germany), revealing a distinct and characteristic HLA gene pool compared to modern day German individuals, and to a dataset of medieval European samples, associating HLA variability with susceptibility to leprosy.
This Club EvMed will feature a dynamic roundtable conversation with several authors of the recently published PNAS paper, “The pandemic exposes human nature: 10 evolutionary insights.” Moderated by Dan Blumstein (Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at UCLA), the panel’s discussants will include Athena Aktipis (Assistant Professor of Psychology at Arizona State University), Martie Haselton (Professor of Psychology at UCLA), and Joe Alcock (Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of New Mexico). They will provide a range of evolutionary insights and hypotheses related to the impact of COVID-19 on human health and social systems. Sign up here for the meeting link.
ISEMPH 2021 will be entirely online. See the meeting webpage for full information.
To register for the meeting, scroll down and click the "Register" box at the bottom left corner of this page.
Join ISEMPH or renew your membership before continuing meeting registration to get the reduced member rate. Membership fees are 20% off until March 31; type "COVIDYEAR" in the discount box on the payment page. Members should log into their ISEMPH account before registering. If you have forgotten or never received a password, click "forgot password" on the login page. To register for the meeting without joining ISEMPH, just click the "Register" box and continue to the next page.
Early registration fees end April 30
Fee categories you are not eligible for will be greyed out on the next page.
To register for the meeting, scroll down and click the "Register" box at the bottom left corner of this page