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Shame has biological roots, possibly enhancing trust, favoring social cohesion. We studied bioeconomic aspects of shame and guilt using three approaches: 1-Anthropo-linguistic studies of Guilt and Shame among the Yanomami, a culturally isolated traditional tribal society; 2-Estimates of the importance different languages assign to the concepts Shame, Guilt, Pain, Embarrassment, Fear and Trust, counting the number of synonyms listed by Google Translate; 3-Quantitative correlations between this linguistic data with socioeconomic indexes. Results showed that Yanomami is unique in having overlapping synonyms for Shame, Fear and Embarrassment. No language had overlapping synonyms for Shame and Guilt. Societies previously described as 'Guilt Societies' have more synonyms for Guilt than for Shame. A large majority of languages, including those from societies previously described as 'Shame Societies', have more words for Shame than for Guilt. The number of synonyms for Guilt and Shame strongly correlated with estimates of corruption, ease of doing business and governance, but not with levels of interpersonal trust. We propose that cultural evolution of shame has continued the work of biological evolution, but its adaptive advantage to society is still unclear. Results suggest that recent cultural evolution must be responsible for the relationship between the levels of corruption of a society and the number of synonyms for Guilt and Shame in its language. This opens a novel window for the study of complex interactions between biological and cultural evolution of cognition and emotions, which might help broaden our insight into bioeconomics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author(s): Klaus Jaffe [1] Sir -- Although your Millennium Essays focus on events in the past 1,000 years, it is easy to lose perspective when analysing time-windows much greater than [...]

The article presents information on several conferences and workshops related to social sciences to be held in 2005 and 2006 in various parts of the world. The Polnet Summer School 2005 will take place in Netherlands from September 18-23, 2005. This summer school will introduce to the analysis of networks in the social sciences with an emphasis in organization studies, management and political science. The Social Capital Foundation will organize the Social Capital Conference and the Economy and Community Conference, from September 21-22 and September 23-24 respectively.

Theoretical and experimental studies suggest that mating and pair formation are not likely to be random. Assortative mating, characterized as “self seeking like”, seems to be widely practiced in nature. Experimental evidence for it is strong among humans seeking a mate. Assortative mating increases the probability of finding a genetically similar mate, without fomenting inbreeding, achieving assortative mating without hindering the working of other mate-selection strategies that aim to maximize the search for “good genes”, optimizing the working of sex in evolutionary terms. Self seeking like seems to be a behavioural inborn trait among humans, and here we present evidence that the same behavioural mechanism seems to be at work when humans choose a pet. We show that in a significant proportion of human-pet pairs, sampled in pet beauty contests, the partners show much higher facial resemblances than can be expected by random pair formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Five candidate pheromone components were identified by analyzing pheromone gland extracts by gas chromatography (GC), coupled GC-electroantennographic detection (EAD), and coupled GC-mass spectrometry (MS): ( E)-11-hexadecenol( E11–16 : OH), ( Z)-11-hexadecenol ( Z11–16 : OH),( E)-11-hexadecenal, ( E)-11-hexadecenyl acetate, and ( Z)-3,( Z)-6,( Z)-9-tricosatriene ( Z3, Z6, Z9–23 : Hy). In electroantennogram (EAG) recordings, synthetic E11–16 : OH elicited stronger antennal responses at low doses than other candidate pheromone components. Field tests demonstrated that synthetic E11–16 : OH as a trap bait was effective in attracting males, whereas addition of Z11–16 : OH inhibited the males' response. Z3, Z6, Z9–23 : Hy strongly enhanced attractiveness of E11–16 : OH, but was not attractive by itself. A pheromone blend with synergistic behavioral activity of an alcohol ( E11–16 : OH) and hydrocarbon ( Z3, Z6, Z9–23 : Hy) component is most unusual in the Lepidoptera. The synthetic two-component pheromone is approximately 60 times more attractive than the female-produced blend and might facilitate the control of this pest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advances in multiagent simulation techniques make it possible to study more realistic dynamics of complex systems and allow evolutionary theories to be tested. Here I use simulations to assess the relative importance of reproductive systems (haplodiploidy vs. diploidy), mate selection (assortative mating vs. random mating) and social economics (pay-off matrices of evolutionary games) in the evolutionary dynamics leading to the emergence of social cooperation in the provision of parental care. The simulations confirm that haplo-diploid organisms and organisms mating assortatively have a higher probability for fixing alleles and require less favorable conditions for their fixation, than diploids or organisms mating randomly. The simulations showed that social behavior was most likely to emerge a) when the cost for parental investment was much lower than the benefits to the offspring, b) when cooperation improved synergistically the fitness of offspring compared to the corresponding egoistic behavior and c) when alleles coding for altruistic or social behavior could be rapidly fixed in the population, thanks to mechanisms such as haplo-diploidy and/or assortative mating. Cooperative social behavior always appeared if sociality conferred much higher fitness gains compared to non cooperative alternatives suggesting that the most important factors for the emergence and maintenance of social behavior are those based on energetic or efficiency considerations. The simulations, in congruence with the scant experimental evidence available, suggest that economic considerations rather than genetic ones are critical in explaining the emergence and maintenance of sociality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using computer simulations I studied the simultaneous effect of variable environments, mutation rates, ploidy, number of loci subject to evolution and random and assortative mating on various reproductive systems. The simulations showed that mutants for sex and recombination are evolutionarily stable, displacing alleles for monosexuality in diploid populations mating assortatively under variable selection pressure. Assortative mating reduced excessive allelic variance induced by recombination and sex, especially among diploids. Results suggest a novel adaptive value for sex and recombination. They show that the adaptive value of diploidy and that of the segregation of sexes is different to that of sex and recombination. The results suggest that the emergence of sex had to be preceded by the emergence of diploid monosexual organisms and provide an explanation for the emergence and maintenance of sex among diploids and for the scarcity of sex among haploid organisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recovery of tropical ecosystems after disturbanceis of interest for future programs of sustainable development. The dynamicsof such processes was evaluated at 26 sites in Venezuela. Ant and plant diversitywere compared between disturbed forests and surrounding savannas, differentstages of recovery and nearby plots with primary vegetation. We estimatedthe species composition for ants, the number of species and equitability forants and plants, and the plant coverage at each site. Of these indices, percentageof plant cover showed the most rapid return to pre-disturbance values. Ina few cases, full return occurred after around 25 years in both savanna andforest. A multiple factorial analysis of ant composition showed that speciesstructure in old recovered sites converged sometimes, but not always, to thatin surrounding natural habitats. Therefore, ant diversity may be used to monitorecosystem recovery. However, even small scale human intervention may haveirreversible effects on tropical habitats. The estimated time constant forforest recovery could serve to calculate human carrying capacity of forestsites for eventual sustainable use of these ecosystems in the Neotropics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Results of an agent-based computer simulation of the evolution of diploid sexual organisms showed that several mate selection strategies confer much higher average fitness to the simulated populations, and higher evolutionary stability to the alleles coding for these strategies, than random mating. Strategies which select for 'good genes' were very successful, and so were strategies based on assortative mating. The results support the hypothesis that mating is not likely to be random in nature and that the most successful mate selection strategies are those based on assortative mating or on advantageous genes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]