Lemur love and the biology of social bonding

The Evolution and Human Adaptation Program (EHAP) at the University of Michigan is proud to present our fall 2021 speaker series:

Note: This talk will take place in-person at the Michigan League - Henderson Room (3rd Floor) and also available via livestream.

What explains diversity in mammalian social systems? Many of the raw neural ingredients proximally responsible for adaptive social behavior are shared across vertebrates, yet these ingredients, including endocrine signaling pathways, are differentially organized into networks across species. Foundational work in social neuroscience proposes that this differential organization explains broad differences in the structure of animal societies, including in the domains of mating arrangements and intersexual dominance relations. In this talk, I present a selection of research my collaborators and I have conducted over the last few years, in which we ask what lemur behavior, hormones, and anatomy can tell us about the translation of rodent-heavy theoretical frameworks to exceptional animal models.