The American scientists Susan Alberts, Jeanne Altmann and Marlene Zuk have received the Frontiers of Knowledge Award this Thursday for demonstrating the key role of social behavior in the evolution of animals and the importance for the conservation of species.
This is the fifteenth edition that the BBVA Foundation celebrates, in which it recognizes each year the contributions of various academics in the field of scientific studies, technology, humanities and artistic creation.
The three award-winning scientists have received the prize in the category of Ecology and Conservation Biology.
The award jury has highlighted that these scientists "have expanded knowledge about the evolutionary importance of behavior as a motor for the survival, reproduction and adaptation of animals", demonstrating "the need to incorporate social interactions into the plans of species conservation.
Altmann, Emeritus Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University, founded an innovative research project in Amboseli National Park in Kenya in 1971 that has studied baboon behavior for more than five decades.
And to which Susan Alberts, Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Anthropology at Duke University, joined in 1983.
Currently, the two scientists co-direct this research that has followed 2,000 primates, revealing how the interactions between males, females, and offspring over several generations determine the social structure of these animals.
The specialists discovered "true paternal care", referring to the important role that males play in caring for their young.
Both males and females mate with multiple partners, but males are capable of identifying their own young and providing care for them.
Another of the results that the research glimpsed was the very important role that both females and males have in social interactions.
Going from being allies to competitors and vice versa in very short periods of time, a determining fact in any complex society.
The award has prompted Amboseli laureates to claim that baboons can serve as models for studying the adaptive capacity of many other animals to environmental degradation.
Silent crickets seeking to survive
The third of the winners, Marlene Zuk, Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior at the University of Minnesota, has explored the relevance of parasites in the social behavior of animals.
“Before, we thought that all these organisms did was carry disease.
But in reality, they play a role in how animals choose their mates or how they interact with each other."
Male crickets, for example, sing to attract females, so natural selection tends to favor those males that sing the most and best.
But this seduction song not only attracts females, but also attracts the attention of a parasitic fly, Zuk explained.
These flies deposit their larvae in the crickets, and the larvae feed on the insects from within, eating them alive.
The ecologist observed how, over a few generations, cricket populations mutated, becoming silent, to avoid being eaten by fly larvae.
The cricket had to decide between passing on its genes or surviving.
"This conflict of selection pressures acting in completely opposite directions has caught the attention of scientists since Darwin," Zuk emphasized.
The ecologist insists on the importance of studying these tiny animals.
“We can't keep something if we don't know it's there.
Many people think that what we want to conserve is the so-called charismatic megafauna, the elephants and the pandas, but I am just as concerned about conserving the little things,” she told the ecologist.
You can follow CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT on
and
, or sign up here to receive
our weekly newsletter
