Biological Anthropology in 2018: Grounded in Theory, Questioning Contexts, Embracing Innovation

Martin, Mary C.

doi:10.1111/aman.13233

Cited by 9 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 109 publications

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“…One solution that is already available and that does not require commitment of additional time and funding is to take certain steps that will make the most of existing data. We offer below a few suggestions we like to invite the biological anthropology community to consider: Commit to transparency and reproducibility in our research design, and methods of data collection and analysis (Martin, ; Turner & Mulligan, ). Fully developed, clearly presented methods should be included within the main article of every publication.…”

Section: Conclusion and Looking Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of pair‐living, sexual monogamy, and cooperative infant care: Insights from research on wild owl monkeys, titis, sakis, and tamarins

Fernández-Duque

Huck

Belle

et al. 2020

American J Phys Anthropol

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“Monogamy” and pair bonding have long been of interest to anthropologists and primatologists. Their study contributes to our knowledge of human evolutionary biology and social evolution without the cultural trappings associated with studying human societies directly. Here, we first provide an overview of theoretical considerations, followed by an evaluation of recent comparative studies of the evolution of “social monogamy”; we are left with serious doubts about the conclusions of these studies that stem from the often poor quality of the data used and an overreliance on secondary sources without vetting the data therein. We then describe our field research program on four “monogamous” platyrrhines (owl monkeys, titis, sakis, and tamarins), evaluate how well our data support various hypotheses proposed to explain “monogamy,” and compare our data to those reported on the same genera in comparative studies. Overall, we found a distressing lack of agreement between the data used in comparative studies and data from the literature for the taxa that we work with. In the final section, we propose areas of research that deserve more attention. We stress the need for more high‐quality natural history data, and we urge researchers to be cautious about the uncritical use of variables of uncertain internal validity. Overall, it is imperative that biological anthropologists establish and follow clear criteria for comparing and combining results from published studies and that researchers, reviewers, and editors alike comply with these standards to improve the transparency, reproducibility, and interpretability of causal inferences made in comparative studies.

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Section: Conclusion and Looking Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

The evolution of pair‐living, sexual monogamy, and cooperative infant care: Insights from research on wild owl monkeys, titis, sakis, and tamarins

Fernández-Duque

Huck

Belle

et al. 2020

American J Phys Anthropol

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“…Along with the R package PELVIS freely available online, we also provide as Supporting Information online the R code used in this study to improve the replicability of all the results–figures and tables–presented hereafter. To promote an open and reproducible research in biological anthropology (Martin, ), this study follows the guidelines given by Nuijten ().…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A method of sexing the human os coxae based on logistic regressions and Bruzek's nonmetric traits

Santos

Guyomarc’h

Rmoutilová

et al. 2019

American J Phys Anthropol

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Objectives: This study aims at proposing a visual method for sexing the human os coxae based on a statistical approach, using a scoring system of traits described byBruzek (2002). This method is evaluated on a meta-population sample, where the data were acquired by direct observation of dry bones as well as computed tomography (CT) scans. A comparison with the original Bruzek's (2002) method is performed. Materials and methods: Five hundred and ninety two ossa coxae of modern humans are included in the reference dataset. Two other samples, composed respectively of 518 ossa coxae and 99 CT-scan images, are both used for validation purposes. The individuals come from five European or North American population samples. Eleven trichotomic traits (expressing female, male, or intermediate forms) were observed on each os coxae. The new approach employs statistical processing based on logistic regressions. An R package freely available online, PELVIS, implements both methods.Results: Both methods provide highly reliable sex estimates. The new statistical method has a slightly better accuracy rate (99.2%) than the former method (98.2%) but has also a higher rate of indeterminate individuals (12.9% vs. 3% for complete bones). Conclusion:The efficiency of both methods is compared. Low error rates were preferred over high ability of reaching the classification threshold. The impact of lateralization and the asymmetry of observed traits are discussed. Finally, it is shown that this visual method of sex estimation is reliable and easy to use through the graphical user interface of the R package. K E Y W O R D Ship bone, identification, innominate, morphoscopy, sex estimation

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“…Applying anthropological theories of human genetic and developmental adaptation, biocultural assessments of psychosocial stress also recognize that meaningful interpretation of stress outcome biomarkers must consider possible underlying variation in relevant physiological processes (e.g., Martin 2019). Individuals vary in physiological stress responses with a host of individual factors like genetic predispositions, prior environmental exposures, gender, body size or composition, and sleep patterns, to name a few.…”

Section: Basic Principles: Biocultural Measurement Of Psychosocial Stress Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biocultural Strategies for Measuring Psychosocial Stress Outcomes in Field-based Research

et al. 2021

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The goal of assessing psychosocial stress as a process and outcome in naturalistic (i.e., field) settings is applicable across the social, biological, and health sciences. Meaningful measurement of biology-in-context is, however, far from simple or straightforward. In this brief methods review, we introduce theoretical framings, methodological conventions, and ethical concerns around field-collection of markers of psychosocial stress that have emerged from 50 years of research at the intersection of anthropology and human biology. Highlighting measures of psychosocial stress outcomes most often used in biocultural studies, we identify the circumstances under which varied measures are most appropriately applied and provide examples of the types of cutting-edge research questions these measures can address. We explain that field-based psychosocial stress measures embedded in different body systems are neither equivalent nor interchangeable, but this recognition strengthens the study of stress as always simultaneously cultural and biological, situated in local ecologies, social–political structures, and time.

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Biological Anthropology in 2018: Grounded in Theory, Questioning Contexts, Embracing Innovation

Cited by 9 publications

References 109 publications

The evolution of pair‐living, sexual monogamy, and cooperative infant care: Insights from research on wild owl monkeys, titis, sakis, and tamarins

The evolution of pair‐living, sexual monogamy, and cooperative infant care: Insights from research on wild owl monkeys, titis, sakis, and tamarins

A method of sexing the human os coxae based on logistic regressions and Bruzek's nonmetric traits

Biocultural Strategies for Measuring Psychosocial Stress Outcomes in Field-based Research

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