A Baboon Model Revisited: Social Evolution in Hamadryas Baboons and Early Hominins

Presentation delivered September 22, 2011 at Haverford College, Chase Auditorium by Larissa Swedell, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Queens College, CUNY."Larissa Swedell’s interests center on the interacting social and reproductive strategies of males and females in complex social systems. More broadly, she is interested in the behavior, ecology, and evolution of nonhuman primates and what they can tell us about human biology, evolution, and behavior. Her research so far has focused mainly on hamadryas baboons in Ethiopia, and she is currently broadening her scope to include chacma baboons of the Western Cape Peninsula of South Africa, where her PhD student Shahrina Chowdhury is conducting her dissertation fieldwork. In the wake of increasing habitat loss and concomitant threats to all wildlife, including baboons, she is actively involved in conservation strategies, mainly via conservation education and public outreach. Swedell is currently directing her resources towards the Save Awash National Park conservation project in Ethiopia (founded and operated by Mathew Pines) and the Imfene Baboon Conservation and Education Initiative (a collaborative public outreach effort that she co- founded and operate with Julian Saunders). Swedell's current research focuses on hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas hamadryas), which have been characterized as the most male-dominated primate species, one in which social organization is largely if not exclusively controlled by males. Such a social system lies at the far extreme of known variation in sex roles among primates, and begs explanation. As a means to elucidate the role of female behavior in hamadryas social organization, she has focused her research over the past 12 years on the behavior and ecology of wild hamadryas baboons in Ethiopia.\ud "--Haverford College events calendar