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Brian Wood - Mutualism and Manipulation in Hadza-Honeyguide Interactions

Speaker: Brian Wood, Yale

Mutualism and Manipulation in Hadza-Honeyguide Interactions
Friday, May 23, 2014, 4:00pm, TD 1701
Reception to follow at 5:00pm in HSSB 2024

When foraging for wild honey, Hadza hunter-gatherers of northern Tanzania are often helped by the Greater Honeyguide (Indicator indicator), a bird that flies ahead of them, leading them to nests of the honey bee, Apis mellifera. In this talk, I will describe research into the ecology and evolution of this interspecific cooperation. I will describe how Hadza and honeyguides interact, test whether honeyguides change the Hadza's efficiency at finding honey, estimate the fraction of the Hadza's diet that is acquired with honeyguides' help, and examine how and why the Hadza manipulate honeyguides. Finally, I will discuss the evolution of this relationship and the importance of honey in human evolution.

Dr. Brian Wood, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Yale University

Dr. Wood’s research focuses on basic social and economic problems that arise from life as a hunter-gatherer. His ongoing research with Hadza hunter-gatherers of northern Tanzania investigates the demographic, ecological, and social processes that guide Hadza in their choices of who they live with, how they acquire and share foods, and the consequences of different residential arrangements.Wood received his B.A. in Anthropology from UC Davis and an M.S. in Computer Science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. He then received A.M and Ph.D. degrees in Anthropology from Harvard University. Prior to his position at Yale, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Ecological Anthropology at Stanford University.

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