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Professor W307 Seeley G. Mudd Hall |
Research Interests
(For more detail on research interests, click here):
My students and I study the social behavior of animals, including humans. Our common perspectives are that (1) natural selection (differential reproduction) is the evolutionary process that leads to adaptation, and that (2) the principal focus of selection is the individual and its genes. Thus, individuals' lifetimes are appropriately viewed as sequences of cost-benefit decisions about how to maximize reproduction. The approach in my group is to develop a priori hypotheses about potential fitness advantages and disadvantages of particular behaviors and then to gather data that yield strong inference tests of the alternatives. Such studies typically involve long-term observations of animals in their natural habitat, supplemented both by comparisons among phylogenetically related species differing in relevant aspects of their biology and by laboratory genetic analyses. There is a common focus in my group on conceptual issues, but not on any one taxon. My doctoral students have worked with spiders, social bees and wasps, tree frogs, grass finches, superb starlings, cowbirds, cardinals, water striders, anemone fishes, tinamous, motmots, brush turkeys, bdelloid rotifers, fig wasps and naked mole-rats; their research sites are Australia, Africa, New Guinea, Mexico, Central and South America, and the United States. My own research focuses on the fragile balance between cooperation and conflict in mammalian and avian societies and, most recently, on topics in Darwinian medicine.
Recent Publications
(For a complete list of publications, click here):
Sherman, P.W. (2009). “Squirrels” (pp. 150-161, with L. Wauters) and “The Role of Kinship” (pp. 162-163) in The New Encyclopedia of Mammals, D.W. Macdonald (Ed.). Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Sherman, P. W., E. Holland, and J. Shellman Sherman (2008). Allergies: Their role in cancer prevention. Quarterly Review of Biology 83: 339-362.
Flaxman, S. M. and P. W. Sherman (2008). Morning sickness: adaptive cause or non-adaptive consequence of embryo viability? American Naturalist 172: 54-62.
Wolff, J.O. and P.W. Sherman, Editors (2007). Rodent Societies. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Safran, R J., V. A. J. Doerr, P. W. Sherman, E. K. Doerr, S. M. Flaxman, and D. W. Winkler (2007). Group breeding in vertebrates: linking individual and population-level analyses. Evolutionary Ecology Research 9: 1163-1185.
Reeve, H. K. and P. W. Sherman (2007). Why measuring reproductive success in current populations is valuable: moving forward by going backward, Pages 86-94 in Evolution of Mind, S. W. Gangestad and J. A. Simpson, Eds. Guilford Publications, NY.
Sherman, P. W. (2006). Teaching through writing. Pages 37-40 in Words of Wisdom: Essays on Teaching by the Weiss Presidential Fellows. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Nielsen, C.R., B. Semel, P.W.
Nielsen, C.R., B. Semel, P.W. Sherman, D.F. Westneat, and P.A. Parker (2006). Host-parasite relatedness in wood ducks: patterns of kinship and parasite success. Behavioral Ecology 17:491-496.
Rubenstein, D. R., D. I. Rubenstein, P. W. Sherman and T. A. Gavin (2006). Pleistocene Park: Does re-wilding North America represent sound conservation for the 21st century? Biological Conservation 132: 232-238.
Schlaepfer, M.A., P.W. Sherman, B. Blossey, and M.J. Runge (2005). Introduced species as evolutionary traps. Ecology Letters 8:241-246.
Lacey, E. A. and P. W. Sherman (2005). Redefining eusociality: concepts, goals, and levels of analysis. Annales Zoologici Fennici 42:573-577.
von Dadelszen, P., L. A. Magee, E. L. Taylor, J. C. Muir, S. D. Stewart, P. W. Sherman, and S. K. Lee (2005). Maternal hypertension and neonatal outcome among small for gestational age infants. Obstetrics and Gynecology 106:335-339.
Blanco, M. A. and P. W. Sherman (2005). Maximum longevities of chemically protected and non-protected fishes, reptiles, and amphibians support evolutionary hypotheses of aging. Mechanisms of Ageing and Development 126:794-803.
Neff, B. D. and P. W. Sherman (2005). In vitro fertilization reveals offspring recognition via self-referencing in a fish with paternal care and cuckoldry. Ethology 111:425-438.
Bloom, G. and P. W. Sherman (2005). Dairying barriers and the distribution of lactose malabsorption. Evolution and Human Behavior 26:301-312.
Koenig, W. D. and P. W. Sherman (2004). In memoriam: Frank Alois Pitelka. Auk 121:963-965.
Bekoff, M. and P.W. Sherman (2004). Reflections on animal selves. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19(4):176-180.
Courses Taught
Introduction to Behavior; Animal Social Behavior; Darwinian Medicine