Trees and teams

Many of the most distinctive elements of human behaviour center on how we think about and interact with groups. From large-scale cooperation to intergroup warfare, groups define and shape our society and evolution. Yet there is a surprising lack of comparative research into the evolutionary origins of group-based behaviour and psychology, where most non-human animal studies target one-on-one interactions. This is despite the fact that our closest relatives, the great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans), show a huge diversity of group-based behaviour. They notably differ from one another in their group stability, frequency of large-scale cooperation, and intensity of competition between neighbouring groups, suggesting they have each experienced different evolutionary histories that define how they think about and interact with groups. By studying the causes and consequences of these differences across species, attention to our evolutionary cousins can therefore help reveal the biological roots and evolutionary forces that explain our own species' group-mindedness.

One would think that finding the largest dry forest in the world would be something easy...but it´s not that simple. Searching for biodiversity in the largest dry forest in the world, Axel, a PhD student from Argentina, embarks on a 400 km journey to study how tree communities change along a rainfall gradient. What he didn’t expect was that… there would be barely any trees at all. This talk dives into the reality of land-use change, deforestation, and landscape fragmentation in one of the most endangered ecosystems on the planet: the Dry Chaco Forest. Through species diversity, forest structure, and drone imagery indices, Axel unpacks the story of a disappearing forest. With a mix of humor and tension, he’ll discuss why this almost non-renewable resource is vanishing and what that means for the future of our planet… and our steak.