On Friday, November 8 there will be a reception in the Maxwell Museum starting at 4:30 PM, followed by the 2024 UNM Research and Discovery Week Keynote Speaker Dr. Herman Pontzer presenting Energy & Time: Metabolic Evolution in Humans & Other Primates in PAÍS Room 1100 at 6:00 PM. 

Abstract

Energy is the common currency for all life, but the strategies used to acquire energy and allocate it among competing tasks can change over different timescales, from ontogeny to evolution. In this talk, I examine the energy budgets of humans and other primates over the life course and through deep time. As we will see, energy budgets expand and contract over evolutionary timescales, but the ecological pressures on metabolic rate are not always clear.  Within species, energy budgets are constrained, with increasing demands for physical activity incurring trade-offs on other tasks. I discuss these findings and their implications for understanding the primate ecology, health, life history, and evolution.

This talk is sponsored by the UNM Department of Anthropology & Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, the UNM Department of Health, Exercise, & Sports Sciences, the UNM Office of the Vice President for Research and the Southwestern Association of Biological Anthropologists.