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The Tsimane

Team

• Directors
• Hillard Kaplan
• Michael Gurven
• Ben Trumble
• Jon Stieglitz
• Current Postdocs
• Past Postdocs
• Graduate Students
• Collaborators in Bolivia
• Collaborators in the USA

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Team

Directors Back to Top

Hillard Kaplan Publications (⇒)

Hilly's research examines the evolution of the human life course. This work has at various times focused on food sharing, fertility decisions, parental investment, sex roles, subsistence behavior, intelligence, and life span.

His empirical work draws on fieldwork with a number of populations including the Ache (Paraguay), Mashco-Piro (Peru), Yora/Yaminahua (Peru), Machiguenga (Peru), and Xhosa (South Africa). Hilly's past work on fertility and parental investment has also drawn on a data collected from men living in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Michael Gurven UCSB Gurven Website (⇒)

Mike's perspective is informed by human behavioral ecology and life history theory, which attempt to explain variation in behavior and physiological systems as adaptive solutions to competing demands of growth, development, maintenance and reproduction. His research focuses on:

(1) biodemography of human lifespan and aging with secondary focus on child development, intergenerational transfers and familial organization.

(2) social and economic behavior among foragers and forager-farmers. Mike is interested in ultimate and proximate explanations for the diversity of pro-social behaviors we find in small-scale, traditional populations, as well as in large-scale modern societies.

These interests have culminated in the Tsimane Life History and Health Project, funded by NIH/NIA and NSF since 2002. Mike has conducted fieldwork with two South American indigenous populations, the Ache of Paraguay and the Tsimane of Bolivia.

Ben Trumble Trumble Lab Website (⇒)

Ben's research focuses on how environmental conditions like parasites, pathogens, food availability, and social interactions impact human health. Taking an evolutionary life history perspective, he uses field and laboratory studies to understand variation in human endocrine systems, and how this influences chronic health conditions like benign prostatic hyperplasia, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer's dementia.

Jon Stieglitz Stieglitz Lab Website (⇒)

Jon's research explores how ecological and social factors affect variability in behavior, psychology, and physiology in small-scale societies. To address research questions, he uses principles from behavioral ecology and life history theory, which attempt to explain modern human variation as an adaptive response to trade-offs between investments in competing demands.

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Collaborators in the United States Back to Top