51st Meeting of the
Human Biology Association
March 18-20, 2026 | Denver, CO, USA
Conference Agenda
Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
Please note that all times are shown in the time zone of the conference. The current conference time is: 19th Mar 2026, 06:50:28pm EDT
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Session Overview |
| Session | ||
EAS Symposium: What the nexus of human biology and behavior can tell us about human evolution
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| Session Abstract | ||
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Ethology – the study of variation in animal behavior and adaptation – is an outgrowth of evolutionary biology. Its application to understanding human variation – human behavioral ecology – has diverse origins, including sociobiology, economics, cultural ecology, and comparative ethnology. Meanwhile, the study of human biological variation has, until recently, remained largely separate. This is despite shared original interests in understanding the potential for and limitations of human adaptation across the brain-body “divide”. In this invited session, we call for renewed attention to the nexus of human biology and behavior, emphasizing the power of their synthesis to highlight not just how biological mechanisms support or constrain behavior, but how biology and behavior work in tandem to impact human evolutionary trajectories. Papers in this session describe the partially overlapping histories of these areas of scholarship, the ways that understanding of human biology has impacted the study of human behavior, vice versa, and the power of joint approaches for revealing nuances in the application of evolution to human behavior. | ||
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11:30am - 11:34am
Introduction to EAS Session 1Rutgers University–New Brunswick, United States of America; 2Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA; 3Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles; 4University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA 11:34am - 11:41am
Salivary testosterone predicts developmental variation in children’s play networks beyond age effects in Utila, Honduras 1Department of Anthropology, Boston University, Boston, MA; 2Department of Anthropology, Washington State University, Pullman, WA; 3Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN; 4Department of Psychology, Nipissing University, North Bay, ON 11:41am - 11:48am
Associations between caregiver presence, child cortisol, and nutritional status among BaYaka foragers in the Republic of the Congo 1Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN; 2Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA; 3Department of Psychology, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE, UK 11:48am - 11:55am
Converging pathways of social factors and health: market integration (MI), kin support, and hypertension in small-scale society 1Linguistics Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL; 2Anthropology Department, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 11:55am - 12:05pm
Coalitions matter for both men and women: insights from three subsistence communities in southwest Ethiopia 1department of Anthropology, Boston University, United States of America; 2Africa Institute for Research in Economics and Social Science, University of Mohammed VI Polytechnic, Morocco 12:05pm - 12:12pm
An evolutionary view on gendered kidney transplantation in Bangladesh 1Rutgers University–New Brunswick, United States of America; 2Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh 12:12pm - 12:22pm
Charity begins at home: The importance of kinship and other biologically-relevant variables in cooperation research 1Texas A&M University; 2Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology; 3Helmoltz Centre for Environmental Research; 4University of Connecticut 12:22pm - 12:29pm
Who deserves to be helped? Global perspectives on social welfare, generosity, and mutual aid 1Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, USA; 2Center for Human Evolutionary Studies (CHES), New Brunswick, NJ, USA; 3Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA 12:29pm - 12:41pm
Traversing a fitness valley in the Pliocene: Dietary shifts and the impact of handling costs on hominin evolution Boise State University, United States of America 12:41pm - 12:53pm
An automated geospatial urbanicity index for anthropological field sites 1University of Washington, United States of America; 2Duke University, United States of America; 3Vanderbilt University, United States of America 12:53pm - 1:00pm
Adaptive variation in social exchange: embodied wealth and strategies of in investment in kin and cooperators Boise State University, United States of America | ||