GELIFES Seminars - Jenny Tung

Jenny Tung (Duke University)

The social genome

Genomic insights into primate evolution, behavior, and divergence

The goal of our work is to link fitness-related behavior, life history, and environmental variation with outcomes that are relevant on an evolutionary timescale, using tools from genomics and social mammals as our focal system. Here, I will discuss our research on the consequences of social relationships for gene regulation in the short-term, and evolutionary change via admixture and hybridization in the long-term. This work involves insights from both captive primates and an intensively studied natural baboon population in Kenya. Together, it emphasizes the value of genomic data for revealing patterns that cannot be captured using phenotypic analyses alone. At the same time, our findings illustrate the importance of interpreting genomic information through an organismal lens.

Biosketch
Jenny Tung is an Associate Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology at Duke University. Jenny joined the Duke faculty in 2012 after completing her post-doctoral training in the University of Chicago Department of Human Genetics and her PhD training in the Duke Biology department. Research in the Tung lab focuses on the intersection between behavior, social structure, and genes. We primarily ask these questions in socially complex nonhuman primates, which are natural models for human behavior, physiology, and demography. Currently, most of our work centers on a longitudinally studied population of wild baboons in Kenya (Tung co-directs the Amboseli Baboon Research Project) and captive rhesus macaques at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

Link to seminar