According to the American Association of Biological Anthropologists Code of Ethics, "departments offering anthropology degrees should include and require ethical training in their curriculums." Ethics training is essential, but are Anthropology undergraduate and graduate programs incorporating ethics education as part of their core curriculum? Do Anthropology undergraduate and graduate students feel like they are receiving adequate education and training in ethics as part of their program curriculum? This study attempts to answer these questions by analyzing undergraduate degree requirements for Anthropology majors in the U.S. and by surveying U.S.-based Anthropology teaching faculty and undergraduate and graduate students. These surveys include questions about Anthropology curricula, program and course learning objectives, and student preparedness in facing ethical dilemmas post-graduation. In total, 142 individuals participated in the survey (94 students, 48 faculty members). The results of this survey indicate that some Anthropology undergraduate and graduate programs are incorporating ethics education as part of their core curriculum, but this is not true for all programs. Unfortunately, the most frequent response was that ethics education was not incorporated into the core curriculum, and students, especially graduate students, do not feel that they are receiving adequate ethics education. Results of this study reveal a gap between the ideal practice proposed in professional academic organizations' codes of ethics and the reality of this application, as well as a disconnect between faculty and student perceptions of the sufficiency of the ethics education being provided. Specific recommendations for filling these gaps are provided.

ABSTRACTObjectivesThis study examines the spatiotemporal ecology of probable malaria mortality in 19th‐century southern Ontario to evaluate how settlement expansion, landscape transformation, and infrastructure development structured transmission risk in a temperate, settler‐colonial context.Materials and MethodsProbable malaria‐attributed deaths recorded in Ontario death certificates (1869–1900; n = 2683) were geocoded and analyzed using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Mortality locations were examined in relation to historical settlements, railways, and wetlands derived from 19th‐century spatial datasets. Spatial clustering was assessed using Average Nearest Neighbor analysis and kernel density estimation. Temporal changes in proximity to landscape features were tested using nonparametric statistics, while malaria mortality density was modeled using negative binomial regression and generalized additive models.ResultsMalaria mortality was significantly clustered across all decades but became progressively less spatially concentrated through time. Mortality locations shifted farther from mapped wetlands as drainage intensified, while proximity to settlements consistently decreased. Regression models identified settlement proximity as the strongest and only significant predictor of malaria mortality density, whereas distances to wetlands were not independently associated once settlement effects were accounted for.DiscussionThese results indicate a reorganization of malaria risk from environmentally constrained ecologies toward anthropogenic landscapes shaped by settlement, agriculture, and infrastructure. Malaria transmission in southern Ontario was embedded within everyday settlement practices rather than static environmental features, demonstrating how colonial landscape transformation structured disease risk in a temperate region. This study highlights the value of spatiotemporal GIS approaches for interpreting past disease ecologies within biological anthropology and paleopathology.

Proceedings of the 95th Business Meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists.

The soft palate harbors a morphologically and functionally heterogeneous population of sensory receptors whose coordinated activation constitutes one of the most ancient and conserved protective reflexes in vertebrate biology: the emetic reflex. Despite decades of investigation into the neurochemistry and pharmacology of emesis, the quantitative topography of palatal receptor populations, comprising free nerve endings (FNEs), encapsulated mechanoreceptors, and epithelial taste receptor cells (TRCs), remains incompletely characterized, and their evolutionary significance has received comparatively little systematic attention. The present manuscript synthesizes existing neuroanatomical, histologic, and comparative data to examine how palatal receptor density and distribution may reflect adaptive pressures operating over primate evolutionary history. Drawing on receptor density estimates from histologic studies, comparative neuroanatomy across the order Primates, and the literature on evolutionary medicine and disgust psychology, it is proposed that variation in palatal receptor density among individuals and populations constitutes a measurable bio-anthropological variable relevant to dietary ecology, toxin exposure regimes, and oral processing behavior. A model of evolutionary co-calibration between palatal receptor density, dietary breadth, and disgust sensitivity is presented. Implications for biological anthropology, evolutionary medicine, and clinical practice, including craniofacial surgery and maxillofacial prosthodontics, are discussed.

Decolonial practices in bioanthropology have led to a shift toward intentional community engagement to inform the questions asked and the methods used, moving from "research on" to "research with". Specifically, in our work with survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi, we have grappled with how to develop contextually and culturally adequate research processes that prioritize community ways of knowing in the context of intense, widescale trauma and tragedy. In this self-reflexive narrative, we describe and reflect upon two stages of studies working with adult children of survivors of the genocide against the Tutsi. We provide the context of such work within the discipline of biological anthropology, and discuss the identities and relationships of the research team. The paper then shifts to a first-person narrative by the first author, the Rwandan insider/outsider leader of the project, describing its evolution from investigator-led observational quasi-experimental research into integrative community-based participatory research, detailing the ways in which engagement with the community has led to new questions and methodological approaches as the project continues to grow collaboratively. Rather than providing prescriptive guidelines for others committed to decolonizing their research programs, we use our experience to illustrate how such approaches necessarily vary across contexts and to highlight the importance of continued flexibility, reflexivity, and respect for community.

Contest competition for mates and female reproductive energetics influence body size and sexual dimorphism across many primates; nevertheless, some monomorphic species defy these patterns. These deviations may reflect biological anthropology's focus on body mass and adult size as defining features of sexual dimorphism. Using ontogenetic data, we test whether sexual monomorphism in adult body mass necessitates monomorphism across all traits and evaluate whether mate competition and female energetics explain sex-specific developmental patterns and adult morphology in a monomorphic primate. We built sex-specific growth curves using generalized additive mixed models to examine levels of sexual dimorphism in 14 morphological measurements across development in Verreaux's sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) at Ankoatsifaka Research Station in western Madagascar. Sifaka exhibited male-biased dimorphism in upper arm and thigh circumference at adulthood and across growth, but not in other contest-related traits. Adult females had significantly longer hindlimbs and thighs and exhibited bimaturism and increased growth rate in these and several other traits. We found limited support for our hypotheses that female reproductive energetics or male-male contest competition drive adult size, sex differences, and growth trajectories in Verreaux's sifaka. However, male-male contest competition likely drives male-biased dimorphism in muscle mass, and longer female hindlimbs may represent an adaptation to infant carrying, reflecting a species-specific suite of dimorphic traits. This study demonstrates that sexual dimorphism exists at finer scales even in monomorphic species, and that adult size and sex differences are the result of a mosaic of selective pressures acting on individual traits.

Many osteological methods used by biological anthropologists today were initially developed using historical anatomical skeletal collections such as the Hamann-Todd and Terry Collections. However, these collections were amassed through state legislation that permitted the dissection and curation of unclaimed individuals. These laws targeted low socioeconomic and marginalized communities that were less likely to be able to afford burial or claim relatives. Until recently, very few scholars have acknowledged the lived experiences of individuals who make up such collections. As such, there are ongoing conversations about the ethics of continued research with these collections. Part of evaluating this ethical dilemma is understanding exactly how these collections are being used for research, to evaluate to what extent these collections are used for methodological studies that neglect to consider the identities of the people in their samples. In this study, we categorized and analyzed research aims for 100 academic journal articles and 185 conference abstracts that used or significantly discussed the Terry, Hamann-Todd, Cobb, or Huntington Collections. Results show that most studies conducted using these collections have historically entertained questions of methodological significance, but there is a recent shift toward studies that focus on the lived experiences of individuals that compose historical anatomical skeletal collections. This analysis demonstrates that the discipline is responding to recent debates about the ethics of historical skeletal collections and is moving toward establishing better recognition of the individuals that constitute some of the most influential collections in biological anthropology.

This international, peer-reviewed journal aims to advance knowledge in the growing and strongly interdisciplinary area of Interaction Studies in biological and artificial systems. Understanding social behaviour and communication in biological and artificial systems requires knowledge of evolutionary, developmental and neurobiological aspects of social behaviour and communication; the embodied nature of interactions; origins and characteristics of social and narrative intelligence; perception, action and communication in the context of dynamic and social environments; social learning, adaptation and imitation; social behaviour in human-machine interactions; the nature of empathic understanding, behaviour and intention reading; minimal requirements and systems exhibiting social behaviour; the role of cultural factors in shaping social behaviour and communication in biological or artificial societies.The journal welcomes contributions that analyze social behaviour in humans and other animals as well as research into the design and synthesis of robotic, software, virtual and other artificial systems, including applications such as exploiting human-machine interactions for educational or therapeutic purposes. Fields of interest comprise evolutionary biology, artificial intelligence, artificial life, robotics, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, computational neuroscience, cognitive modeling, ethology, social and biological anthropology, palaeontology, animal behaviour, linguistics. Interaction Studies publishes research articles, research reports, and book reviews.Interaction Studiesis a successor of Evolution of Communication. While IS significantly broadens the original aims and scope of EoC, we clearly continue to encourage researchers studying the origins of human language and the evolutionary continuum of communication in general to submit high quality manuscripts to Interaction Studies.

Forensic anthropology is a specialised field of biological anthropology that applies skeletal analysis and archaeological techniques within a legal and humanitarian context, mainly to contribute to identification of the deceased. In this paper we provide a brief overview of how forensic anthropology is organised in the Nordic countries, and the main tasks performed by forensic anthropologists. These include the analysis of human skeletal remains, particularly aiming at constructing a biological profile of the deceased. We touch upon recent developments in the field regarding the interpretation and understanding of bone trauma and the use of modern medical imaging technologies.

Abstract Phenotypes are multidimensional. Yet many contemporary methodologies lack the capability to fully quantify the biological complexity of dynamic and multivariate processes. To address this, we fit a Bayesian Gaussian copula model with a diverse, high dimensional human growth and development dataset using traits related to growth of individual long bones, development and ossification of the skeleton, and development of the dentition. The results demonstrate a modular pattern of human growth and development with the strongest relationships between traits of similar ontogenetic origin. Relationships between traits are hierarchically organized within and between modules and can be further dissected into units related to growth direction, ontogenetic timing of skeletal fusion and dental development. We show that the results above can be translated to practical applications in biological anthropology such as the estimation of an unknown independent variable (e.g. forensic age estimation) or the estimation of a missing response variable (e.g. data imputation). Our understanding of the multivariate human growth and development phenotype is enhanced by this research, and it demonstrates the necessity of appropriate multivariate modelling in both inference and prediction tasks.

The Human Genome Project, together with the subsequent advent of diverse repositories for storing, sharing, and analyzing biological data, represented a revolution in the way genetic research is conducted. The overwhelming landscape of omics data resources available today provides an exceptional opportunity to drive innovations in human genetics. Here, we report an updated compilation of 117 open-access and active resources containing DNA, RNA, protein and phenotypic data, viewed through the lens of a population geneticist. A deep inspection of these resources from both spatial and temporal perspectives allows us to identify trends in the use of large-scale biological data, as well as the current and future challenges in the field-including the implementation of new technologies, the call for greater diversity in the sampled populations, and the imperative role of bioethics. Addressing these issues requires the integration of biology and medicine, along with the crucial insights gained from population-based research.

P. Anagnostou, V. Dominici, C. Battaggia, N. Boukhchim, J. Ben Nasr, R. Boussoffara, E. Cancellieri, M. Marnaoui, M. Marzouki, H. Bel Haj Brahim, M. Bou Rass, S. di Lernia, G. Destro Bisol, "Berbers And Arabs: Tracing The Genetic Diversity And History of Southern Tunisia Through Genome Wide Analysis," American Journal of Biological Anthropology 173, no. 4 (2020): 697-708, https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.24139. The above article, published online on 16 September 2020 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the authors; the journal's Editors-in-Chief, Trudy Turner and Connie Mulligan; the American Association of Biological Anthropologists; and Wiley Periodicals LLC. Concerns were raised by a third party regarding the study's collection of genetic information from participants, and the timing of ethical approval in relation to data collection. The institution provided a copy of the ethical approval certificate; however, the University and the co-authors were unable to locate additional documentation that could help address the concerns raised about the consent procedure. Wiley investigators also learned that the first and corresponding author, Paolo Anagnostou, had passed away since the publication of the study. As a result, the senior author and population geneticist Giovanni Destro Bisol, in agreement with the authors, has proactively requested the retraction of their article.

Program of the 95th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Biological Anthropologists.

While current consensus among biological anthropologists has reconceptualized the notion of prehistoric man from "the hunter" to "the hunted," the former remains influential in Western constructions of maleness; specifically, the trope of men as rugged meat-eaters whose destiny is characterized by social and ecological dominance over other cultures and species. This research explored how traditional Western (binary) gender roles influence the association of social dominance in human-to-human and human-to-animal relationships to understand how they collectively shape meat consumption. Specifically, does gendered prejudice toward humans and animal exploitation also shape meat-eating attitudes? We hypothesized positive correlations among social dominance, speciesism, and meat-eating using the Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), Social Dominance Human-Animal Relations (SD-HARM), and Meat Consumption and Intention Scale (MCIS). Results showed strong positive correlations among social dominance and speciesism, with independent associations of each to meat-eating that were intensified by traditional constructions of maleness. Findings suggest that the human inclination toward hierarchical systems reflect a tendency toward environmental compartmentalization that also influence and regulate dietary preferences and behavior.

The Concept of Adaptation in Biological Anthropology

Biological anthropology has long positioned foraging and often pastoralist populations as the most appropriate referent communities for the rigorous study of human behavior and evolution. With this, we have created a framework in which these communities exist in a world system that experiences the passage of time functionally differently than do individuals living in industrialized settings. Such thinking has come to structure our understanding of behavioral phenomena across time and space, encourage narrow interpretations of the relevance of various social processes, and constrain our ability to accurately imagine the full capacity of human behavioral variability. Our selective sampling persists despite the development of extra-genetic theoretical models that should be applicable in all communities. To meet even the most modest ends of this decolonial moment and for our science to continue expanding to include shifting landscapes resulting from increased globalization, it is necessary to move beyond assumptions about what has or has not changed in foraging communities, incorporate analyses about changes into research questions when appropriate, contend with observer bias in highly sampled communities, and expand research programs interested in human behavior and evolution to communities engaged in all kinds of economies and subsistence practices.

The contribution of modern biological anthropology to player development and selection in elite soccer.

This review article explores the concept of de-generacy as a fundamental yet underutilised principle in evolutionary anthropology. De-generacy, defined as structurally distinct elements performing overlapping functions, is widely recognised in genetics, neurobiology, and immunology but remains overlooked in cultural evolution. Distinguishing de-generacy from redundancy-where identical structures fulfill the same role-is crucial for understanding adaptability, resilience, and innovation in both biological and cultural systems. Despite its explanatory potential, de-generacy has been largely absent from anthropological discourse due to historical baggage and terminological confusion. The misuse of "degeneracy" in colonial and eugenic narratives has hindered its application, even as contemporary evolutionary theory-particularly the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis-highlights structural variation as a driver of adaptive complexity. Consequently, an opportunity to refine methodologies in anthropological research, particularly in modelling cultural transmission, has been overlooked. De-generacy is a distributed property of complex adaptive systems that, in many circles of science, has been hidden in plain sight, overlooked because of a reductionist bias, and ignored because the term itself is misleading. This article clarifies the distinction between de-generacy and redundancy and demonstrates its significance in biological anthropology. Empirical examples illustrate degeneracy across multiple domains, including linguistic variation, kinship terminologies, and ritual practices. A comparative case study of Indonesian Silek and Brazilian Capoeira provides a snapshot of how structurally distinct yet functionally similar cultural formations emerge across diverse contexts. These examples reinforce de-generacy as a key explanatory principle in cultural resilience and transformation. By integrating degeneracy into evolutionary anthropology, this article advances a more nuanced understanding of cultural transmission and transformation. Recognising structurally diverse yet functionally coherent practices enhances models of cultural evolution, moving beyond strictly adaptationist explanations. Ultimately, degeneracy provides a robust conceptual tool for analysing variation, complexity, and persistence in human evolutionary systems, warranting greater attention in interdisciplinary research.

Faking it for science: generative artificial intelligence at the crossroads of biological and cultural anthropology.

Funerary practices and burial sites offer valuable insights into how societies conceptualize death and an enhanced perspective on communities' social, economic, and cultural contexts. The integration of archaeological data, historical records, iconographic and documentary sources, and socio-cultural anthropology strengthens the understanding of death-related discourses, symbolic representations, and changing attitudes over time. Key funerary indicators, such as graves and spatial distribution in the necropolis, inhumation type, body positioning and orientation, and grave goods, reveal the deceased's integration in their communities and socioeconomic status. This paper explores these indicators to promote a broader understanding of communities' cultural, social, and economic contexts, focusing on the Portuguese Post-Medieval period (1450–1835) while summarizing key concepts. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of a multidisciplinary approach for a comprehensive interpretation of funerary practices. A detailed contextual analysis of skeletal remains, burial features, and associated material culture is essential to ensure reliable interpretations of funerary practices and social dynamics. Nevertheless, this approach requires the expertise of professionals with extensive fieldwork experience and specialized knowledge in archaeology, biological and forensic anthropology, and bioarchaeology.