Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

Mom: “Eat my sh*t and then help your younger siblings”

Posted 06 Sep 2018 / 0

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences “Responses to pup vocalizations in subordinate naked mole-rats are induced by estradiol ingested through coprophagy of queen’s feces” Okay, we all knew that naked mole rats are weird. The inbreeding, the eusociality in a mammal, and… well, the look. But this is a new wrinkle. Apparently mom is sending Read More

A Minor Post, Behavior, Kin Selection

Mom leaves, offspring get buff and work together

Posted 06 Sep 2018 / 0

Science News “When this beetle mom disappears, her children become stronger and nicer” There are so many cool aspects to this study! First, it is amazing that lab evolution can produce this dramatic a change in both anatomy and behavior. These results are kind of like what we observe in artificial selection scenarios: there’s a lot Read More

A Minor Post, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Competition, Cooperation, Kin Selection, Parenting

Great conversation at my Columbia University Population Biology Seminar talk

Posted 14 Mar 2016 / 0

It was a great honor to speak on this past Monday, March 7th, 2016 as part of Columbia University’s Population Biology seminar series. I gave a talk entitled “Breeders, Propagators, & Creators: Culture, Biology, and the Future of Human Evolution” to a small group of biology faculty and students from a nice diversity of different Read More

A Major Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Uniqueness, Kin Selection, Parenting, Population Pressure, Public Outreach, Public Policy, Reproductive Fitness, Sex and Reproduction

The often-large difference between “breeding” and “parenting”

Posted 02 Oct 2015 / 0

WNYC The Leonard Lopate Show “Options Grow For Starting a Non-Traditional Family” As I continue to work on my popular science book with the working title Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to be a parent. Biological parenting (what I call “breeding”… why to be explained) is a Read More

A Major Post, Breeders, Propagators, & Creators, Cultural Evolution, Kin Selection, Parenting, Radio & Podcasts, Reproductive Fitness, Social Diversity, Sociology

Rule number one of cooperative bacterial warfare? Be in the majority.

Posted 25 Aug 2015 / 0

Current Biology “Positively Frequency-Dependent Interference Competition Maintains Diversity and Pervades a Natural Population of Cooperative Microbes” This is another great example of how theory that does not consider space is a poor representation of nature. Here, the diversity of a soil bacterium (Myxococcus xanthus) is shown to be potentially explained by positive frequency-dependent selection, the Read More

A Minor Post, Articles, Competition, Cooperation, Ecological Modeling, Evolutionary Modeling, Kin Selection, Microbial Ecology, Soil Ecology

Do humans form genetically similar social groups independent of kinship?

Posted 26 Jul 2014 / 1

Proponents of kin selection as the most parsimonious explanation of how cooperation evolves face a problem when it comes to humans: counter to the predictions of kin selection theory, humans aim a fair amount of altruism at non-kin. While we do not aim our helping behaviors solely at our relatives, we also do not randomly Read More

A Major Post, Altruism, Articles, Behavior, Cooperation, Genetics, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Kin Selection, Psychology, Radio & Podcasts, Reciprocity, Social Networks, Sociology

My review of “Origins of Altruism and Cooperation” is published in QRB

Posted 30 Aug 2013 / 0

I am excited to report that my review of Origins of Altruism and Cooperation was just published in the Quarterly Review of Biology. Although it requires some work to get through, this collection presents a really important counter-narrative to the prevailing attitude in evolutionary biology that altruism is simply self-interest in disguise. The book uses Read More

A Major Post, Altruism, Behavior, Books, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Empathy, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Kin Selection, Multilevel Selection, My publications, Primatology, Reciprocity, Social Networks, Social Norms

Ethnocentric cooperation dominates humanitarian cooperation in the computer… so why does humanitarianism persist?

Posted 23 Aug 2013 / 2

Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation “The Evolutionary Dominance of Ethnocentric Cooperation” Human beings are not always (or completely) engulfed in a war of tribe against tribe. In other words, we are not strictly “ethnocentric” in our cooperation: we are willing to cooperate with those not directly identified as our “in group”. This modeling Read More

A Minor Post, Cooperation, Individual-based Models, Kin Selection

Cooperative child-rearing pays dividends for ruffed lemurs, irrespective of kinship

Posted 23 Aug 2013 / 0

Mongabay News “The evolution of cooperation: communal nests are best for ruffed lemurs” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology “Communal nesting, kinship, and maternal success in a social primate” What I find particularly interesting about these findings is that they appear to show that kinship — if a factor at all — might well be a byproduct Read More

A Minor Post, Articles, Behavioral Ecology, Cooperation, Kin Selection, Mating systems, Mutualism, Reciprocity, Reproductive Fitness, Tropical Forest, Web

National Geographic “The Short Happy Life of a Serengeti Lion”

Posted 23 Aug 2013 / 0

National Geographic “The Short Happy Life of a Serengeti Lion” This article provides a great overview of the kind of work that Craig Packer’s research group does in the Serengeti to understand the social behavior of lions. There is valuable information here on why lions are social (unlike other large cats), why lions must cooperate, Read More

A Minor Post, Articles, Behavior, Behavioral Ecology, Carrying Capacity, Cooperation, Grasslands, Kin Selection, Predation, Reciprocity