Emlen, Stephen T.
Professor Emeritus/aresearch
research and scholarship focus
The goal of my research is to better understand the social interactions that occur between individual oganisms. I am particularly interested in cooperation and conflict in societies comprised of close genetic relatives (such as multi-generational family-based societies). I find that the Darwinian logic of natural selection theory provides a powerful framework for achieving this understanding. As our knowledge of the dynamics of familial societies increases, so too does our ability to use animal models as analogs for better understanding human social behavior.
research areas
- ecology | collaborative research area (CALS)
- evolution | collaborative research area (CALS)
- family | collaborative research area (CALS)
- ornithology | collaborative research area (CALS)
- zoology | collaborative research area (CALS)
submitted impact statement
- PROJECT 1: The evolving family: Family processes, contexts, and the life course of children| |PROJECT 2: Using animal models to understand human family dynamics||PROJECT 3: Transnational environmental training in Kenya | 2007 Impact statement
- PROJECT 1. The evolving family: family processes, contexts, and the life course of children|PROJECT 2. Using animal models to understand general rules of family dynamics | 2006 Impact statement
- Human families in transition: what can an evolutionary perspective tell us? | 2004 Impact statement
affiliations
emeritus faculty in
- Neurobiology and Behavior (BIO NB) | Cornell department
member of graduate field
- Neurobiology and Behavior | graduate field
teaching
teaching focus
My teaching is focused on introducing students to animal behavior, from an adaptive evolutionary perspective. I teach in the highly popular introductory course, BioNB 221 (I present a series of lectures). I also teach an advanced, socratically taught seminar course on `Evolutionary perspectives on human social behavior`.
service
outreach focus
APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES ACTIVITIES: `EVOLVING FAMILY PROJECT TEAM MEMBER`, Cornell Institute for Social Science||TRANSNATIONAL TRAINING IN KENYA|I am the PI of NSF-funded project to train Kenyan nationals in modern methods of field study in Behavioral Ecology. This work has been based at the National Museums of Kenya (Nairobi) and the Mpala Research Centre (Nanyuki).
event host
publications
linked articles
Keywords: behavioral ecology, evolutionary biology, evolution of social behavior, family dynamics, human behavior, ornithology