Centre for Culture and Evolution

a kitten is sleeping in a cage . ALT: a kitten is sleeping in a cage .

With the help of some silicon friends, I built an open science escape room (works best on desktop) using Shiny and Shinylive in R. This is for a guest lecture to some 3rd years embarking on their thesis project. Give it a go if that's the sort of thing you like, tvpollet.github.io/shiny_live_o...

EHBEACommitteeNominationForm_Pres_Sec.doc EHBEA Committee 2026-2029: Nomination Form The EHBEA Steering Committee is calling for nominations for the following open committee positions for 2026-2029. You are invited to nominate one or more c...

EHBEA is looking for new PRESIDENT and SECRETARY for 2026-2029! 👀

If you know of anybody who could represent EHBEA, nominate them as president!

If you know with good organisational skills, nominate them as secretary!

DEADLINE: 16/12/2026

HERE IS THE FORM 👇

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

8/ for more info read the paper or the lead authors great thread... 🥳

a man wearing earrings and a jacket is sitting in front of a city skyline and says #fallontonight ALT: a man wearing earrings and a jacket is sitting in front of a city skyline and says #fallontonight

7/ So, if your argument starts with “polygyny creates armies of involuntary bachelors” the numbers don’t back you up. 📝⚠️

5/ Sooo what’s going on?

The authors suggest polygyny often coexists with strong pro-marriage norms which may explain why high-polygyny places don’t show a glut of single men 🧠🧩

4/ The authors look at 84.1M census records from 30 countries (Africa/Asia/Oceania), from 1969 to 2016 🌎

Result?

Where polygyny is more common, the share of unmarried men is negative or null, not higher

So much for the “surplus bachelors” trope 🧪📈

3/ this demographic model shows many real-world populations are female-skewed enough to support some polygyny without locking men out of marriage 🔍🧮

2/ polygyny = one man, multiple wives 💍 (so we're talking about the same stuff)

A popular story is that polygyny leaves lots of men single, which fuels crime and conflict but this data-driven review challenges this 💽📊

🧵 1/ New paper from CCEs @rebeccasear.bsky.social led by @hggaddy.bsky.social with @anthrolog.bsky.social challenging some common assumptions about polygyny (there are many…)

it's open access 🔓 🧪 @brunelpsy.bsky.social

High rates of polygyny do not lock large proportions of men out of the marriage market | PNAS There is a widespread belief, in both the scholarly literature and the popular press, that polygyny prevents large numbers of men from marrying by ...

🚨 The Economist has been telling you for years that polygamy causes civil war by locking men out of marriage. A new article with @rebeccasear.bsky.social and @anthrolog.bsky.social explains that the demography of marriage markets doesn't actually work that way. 🧵

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Here the bsky of the new project I’ve just started working on with @chiara-bonacchi.bsky.social, @zachhorne.bsky.social, and @johnmartindale.bsky.social at the University of Edinburgh! We will investigate, from a cultural evolution perspective, the spread of heritage-based hostility on social media.

The ‘Politicization’ of Fertility to Achieve Non-Demographic Objectives Published in Population Studies: A Journal of Demography (Vol. 51, No. 1, 1997)

On 'The Politicization’ of Fertility to Achieve Non-Demographic Objectives', written in 1997: "The use of fertility (& population growth) related arguments to justify policies on matters which cannot be proved to be related to fertility without intervening assumptions is at least as old as Malthus"

Thoughtful piece on the distinction between freedom of speech and academic freedom, and how the former is being mobilised to erode the latter:

"Under freedom of speech, the distinction between true and false is irrelevant. Academic freedom is about seeking truth or producing better knowledge"

ACE Teaching Innovation Awards empower scholars to incorporate high-quality cultural evolution course materials into their teaching. This is a great opportunity for those from majority-world countries and ECR academics, but everyone can apply!

culturalevolutionsociety.org/grants-and-a...

A useful way to understand your statistical model and the power you might have in your analyses is to simulate data. This ⬇️
https://bsky.app/profile/joelpick.bsky.social/post/3lyv2m74y5c2d
is a tool that can help with that! Designed for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, but based on general […]

On Tue 30th September, the Frontiers in Social Evolution seminar will be on "Writing for the Public". Info on speakers and how to join here:

Open call for 3-5 month Early Career Fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin

https://www.wiko-berlin.de/en/becoming-a-fellow/wiko-early-career-calls/early-career-call-life-and-natural-sciences

deadline Nov 1

Final week to apply for the 2026 SFI Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships

If you're an early-career scholar and passionate about collaborative, transdisciplinary research beyond traditional departments, this is the postdoc fellowship for you.

Deadline: Oct 1, 2025

Apply: santafe.edu/sfifellowship

Why does Western Paleolithic cave art strongly prefer animal side views and often use abbreviations? Our new paper in Topics in Cognitive Science challenges long-held assumptions about these artistic choices using cognitive science experiments. A thread 1/n
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

#HBES2026 abstract submissions are live! More exciting details to come soon.

Arrive early for @ces2026.bsky.social

@humbehevosoc.bsky.social

Self-promotion (and cultural evolution specific...): acerbialberto.com/IBM-cultevo/

Research Fellowships Each year, IAST invites applications for post-doctoral Research Fellowships, which offer candidates an opportunity to devote themselves full-time to their research at the start of their careers. Fello...

📢 Apply to our (2-year) research fellowships at @iast.fr

Join a multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and indisciplinary group of scholars in Toulouse, walkable/cyclable pink city of chocolatines in the South of France.

Deadline: November 15, 2025.

www.iast.fr/research-fel...

Miyagawa Shuntei's 1898 painting, "Playing Go (Japanese Chess)"

How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go!

400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!

"How does information infrastructure shape long-term cultural evolution?"

for the game of Go, "the influence of AI has produced only a modest, short-lived disruption in the distribution of opening moves"

'The Desperation of Causal Inference in Ecology'

"What’s the solution? If you ask me, be less gaga over any statistical method and teach everyone basic biological models, simulate data from it and then fit their statistical model to it." […]

#CESRabat 🇲🇦

...
Cultural evolution 🧪

Lee Cronk just made me aware of this Wiki that tracks places to study #evolutionary #behavioral #science. Check it out (and update as necessary). via #HBES

evosocialscience.wikidot.com/places-to-st...

An NIH Reviewer Offers Grant-Writing Tips Although securing grants in a competitive environment is challenging, researchers can ensure they put their best foot forward by following a few simple tips.

An #NIH reviewer offers #grant-writing tips. #getfunded

www.the-scientist.com/an-nih-revie...

Are alpha males real? The term "alpha male" was coined in 1970 to describe wolves. But what does science think about the term now?

“Alpha status is more like a temporary job role than an innate characteristic of the leading individual”

www.livescience.com/animals/are-...

Can ChatGPT help science writers?

Tl;dr = No.

www.science.org/content/blog...