PYI: Social Behavior in Apes and Dolphins

这一行动是为了向芭芭拉·斯穆茨博士推荐总统青年研究员奖。斯穆茨博士开始了杰出的职业生涯，她的研究至少涵盖了两个主要学科：人类学和心理生物学。她对狒狒社会关系的实地研究给自由生活的非人类灵长类动物的研究带来了活力和方法论上的纪律。这项工作是非常定量的，对人类社会关系的研究以及对社会相互作用的功能意义的进化观点的研究都是非常重要的。她目前的研究通过比较黑猩猩和海豚的社会认知来研究复杂的社会组织和智力之间的进化关系。由于一方面是人类和猿类，另一方面是齿鲸，它们独立地进化出了大型大脑和复杂的社会，因此比较研究应该能提供单独研究这两个群体无法获得的洞察力。Smuts博士是涉及社会关系的定量研究的前沿，她的工作无疑将改变我们看待友谊、联盟和合作模式的方式，改变交配环境之外男性和女性长期从属关系的存在，以及男婴关系的重要性和性质。

This action is to recommend a Presidential Young Investigator Award for Dr. Barbara Smuts. Dr. Smuts has embarked on an outstanding career in which her research spans at least two major disciplines, anthropology and psychobiology. Her field research on social relationships in baboons has invigorated and brought methodological discipline to the study of free-living non-human primates. This work has been extremely quantitative and sheds light on the study of human social relationships as well as illuminating evolutionary perspectives on the functional significance of social interactions. Her current research investigates the evolutionary relationship between complex social organization and the intelligence through comparisons of social cognition in chimpanzees and dolphins. Because humans and apes on the one hand, and the toothed whales on the other, have evolved large brains and complex societies independently, a comparative study should provide insights that cannot be obtained by studying either group on its own. Dr. Smuts is at the forefront of quantitative research involving social relationships and her work will undoubtedly change the way we view patterns of friendship, alliance, and cooperation, the existence of long term affiliations of male and female outside the mating context, and the import and nature of male-infant relationships.