The Evolution of Beauty

Richard O. Prum In conversation with evolutionary biologist Amy Parish
Tuesday, May 16, 2017 | 7:15pm Mark Taper Auditorium-Central Library

Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays—from pheasants with 3D feathers to moonwalking manakins—traits that seem disconnected from selection for individual survival. Culminating 30 years of fieldwork, Richard Prum, the Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History and a world-renowned ornithologist, revives Darwin’s long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change. Sharing from his latest work, The Evolution of Beauty, Prum presents a unique scientific vision for how nature’s splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves in a conversation with evolutionary biologist Amy Parish.

Dr. Amy Parish

Dr. Amy Parish

Dr. Amy Parish is a biological anthropologist, primatologist, and Darwinian feminist. She taught at University of Southern California in the Gender Studies, Arts and Letters, Public Health, and Anthropology departments for thirteen years.  She is currently affiliated faculty at Georgetown University and a research associate at University College London.  She conducted ground-breaking research on patterns of female dominance and matriarchal social structure in one of our closest living relatives, the bonobo.  She is currently working on a book about love, marriage, and the experience of being a wife.

Richard Prum

Richard O. Prum is William Robertson Coe Professor of Ornithology at Yale University, and Head Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. He has conducted field work throughout the world, and has studied fossil theropod dinosaurs in China. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010.

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Main image:  In the bower… Credit: Doug Riley

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