The Shuar Life History Project is part of the UCSB
Center
for Evolutionary Psychology’s Human Universals Project, and is a collaborative
effort involving researchers from the University of Oregon, UCSB
Center for
Evolutionary Psychology, UCLA, the Shuar Federation, and the Ecuadorian Health
Ministry Hospital in Sucúa, Ecuador.
The goal is to conduct a wide range of integrated studies in the Morona-Santiago region of Ecuador over the next four years. The range of conditions experienced by Shuar provides an excellent opportunity to test evolutionary life history predictions, as well as the universality of hypothesized psychological adaptations. Studies will investigate Shuar health, subsistence, economy, parenting, reasoning, and demography. The data collected will be used to test a wide variety of life history hypotheses related to evolution of the juvenile period and long lifespan, as well as the decision making adaptations underlying economic, mating, reproductive, and parenting strategies, cooperation, health care, and health outcomes. Collaborators in psychology and anthropology will also send students to Ecuador to work in villages testing additional hypotheses cross-culturally.
The Shuar Life History Project is in its early stages, and is presently seeking students interested in working in the area. Graduate students already enrolled in other programs who are interested in conducting research in the area and collaborating on the project are encouraged to contact the organizers. Interested prospective students are encouraged to apply to the University of Oregon graduate program in anthropology. Research foci might include studying the socio-ecological determinants of birth outcomes, assessing water and soil quality, mapping and measuring garden productivity, examining attractiveness psychology and mating patterns, studying politics and warfare, measuring hormone levels in relation to behavior, or examining human/primate interactions, just to name a few possibilities. The broad goal is to collect as much data as possible about the Shuar, their socio-ecological environment, and their decision making psychology (broadly defined) to produce an integrated study of one society from an evolutionary, adaptationist perspective, since all factors are ultimately interrelated and affect life history decisions and phenotypic outcomes.
Grants:
NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant BCS-0925910: Lifestyle and Reproductive Effects on Bone Mineral Density in an Amazonian Forager-Horticulturalist Population
2009 Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant: Lifestyle and Reproductive Effects on bone mineral Density in an Amazonian Forager-Horticulturalist Population
2009 L.S.B. Leakey Foundation Research Grant: The effects of reproductive history and lifestyle on bone density among the Shuar
NSF Dissertation Improvement Grant BCS-0824602: The Effects of Parental Investment and Market Integration on Growth and Immune Function in an Indigenous Amazonian Population
NIH 5DP1O000516-04 to Leda Cosmides at the UCSB Center for Evolutionary Psychology
Other Funding:
UO Anthropology Department and UO Office of Research Grants, Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship, UO Anthropology Department, and UO Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences Research Grants; and the Ministerio de Salud Pública de Morona Santiago, Ecuador.