A new study, co-authored by Guido Caniglia, highlights optimism and complexity thinking as key factors to foster interpersonal trust during times of crises.

Led by fresh KLI alumna Anna-Katharina Brenner, this paper explores the long-lasting impact of settlement arrangements in cities on sustainability, and emphasizes the importance of understanding the drivers that change settlement patterns.

We welcome Richard Gawne from the Duke University to the KLI.

Isabella Sarto-Jackson contributed a chapter titled, "Die sozio-kulturelle Beschleunigung der Evolution (translated as The Socio-Cultural Acceleration of Evolution)" to the book Wechselwirkungen und Zufall in der Evolution (translated as Interactions and Chance in Evolution), edited by Markus Knoflacher (Club of Vienna). Each chapter in this volume examines characteristics of evolutionary processes that continue to challenge human society from a unique perspective, and also provides a compelling reflection that contradicts the dominant ideas of humans' complete control and predictability over all earthly processes—concepts which are increasingly encapsulated in the term "Anthropocene." In her chapter, Isabella explores the key factors influencing human evolution, and their interactions, highlighting how they have shaped the unique evolutionary trajectory of humans.(Click on title to read more.)

KLI Fellow Enrico Petracca contributed a chapter in a book project dedicated to famous economist and cognitive scientist of the 20th century, Herbert H. Simon. Edited by Gerd Gigerenzer, (the late) Shabnam Mousavi , and Riccardo Viale, the book ‘Elgar Companion to Herbert Simon’ is now out, and with Enrico’s contributed chapter titled, ‘A double-edged metaphor: Simon and the scissors of bounded rationality’. (Click on title to read on.)

A team of KLI Fellows, co-led by Laura Menatti and Corey Bunce, and including Anna-Katharina Brenner, Joyshree Chanam, Marina Knickel and Hari Sridhar, contributed a book chapter titled, "Adapting to Heatwaves: Reframing, Understanding, and Translating Strategies from India to the EU" to the book "Strengthening European Climate Policy" produced by the European SSH CENTRE. This book chapter is the main outcome of an interdisciplinary project started in 2023, for which former KLI scientific director Guido Caniglia acted as facilitator. This book chapter proposes an innovative framework for understanding adaptation to climate change through an interdisciplinary approach. (Click on title to continue...)

In a recent paper, published in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Onerva Kiianlinna (KLI & University of Helsinki) argues that the enactivist and representationalist frameworks can and should be brought together when talking about aesthetic judging. (Click on title to read more.)

In their recent published in Philosophical Transactions B, KLI Fellow Hari Sridhar, along with Judith L. Bronstein (University of Arizona) delve into the connexion between two different levels of cooperation, viz., within species cooperation and between-species cooperation. We are also happy to share that Hari's study system (mixed-species bird flocks) made it to the cover of this issue!

A recent paper in Nature Communications, co-led by Nicole Gunstra (University of Vienna), Anne Le Maître (KLI) and Philipp Mitteröcker (KLI and University of Vienna) revealed that animals with very little genetic relatedness, Afrotheria and their non-afrotherian counterparts, inhabiting similar habitats or having similar ecologies, showed high similarity in their inner ears—a clear case of convergent adaptive evolution, demonstrating high evolvability of the inner ear in mammals. The authors explain that this high evolvability is facilitated by the anatomical, genetic and developmental complexity of the ear, which bestows upon it a higher developmental modularity, and consequently leading to the high diversity observed in ears of mammals as compared to other vertebrates.

In their most recent paper published in Systematic Biology, Philipp Mitteroecker, Michael L. Collyer and Dean C. Adams introduce a new system to measure phylogenetic signal in multivariate phenotypes. Phylogenetic signal is the tendency of closely related species to resemble each other more than distant ones. The authors approach a long-standing challenge in the statistical estimation of phylogenetic signal in mutivariate phenotypes, as phylogenetic signal until now have been mostly designed for univariate traits. However, biological traits are often multivariate, and univariate measures are therefore inadequate, and not meaningful on their own. The authors propose a novel method where the multivariate data is decomposed into linear combinations with the most or least phylogenetic signal, which is measured by Blomberg’s K. These components, called K-components, can be interpreted biologically, and scatterplots can show the data in a way that preserves phylogenetic signal. (Click on title to continue.)

In this new paper, Elis Jones argues that scientific activity is literally niche construction. Using data from interviews conducted with coral scientists, Elis examines the socio-ecological dimensions of science, especially how science shapes and is shaped by the living world around it. (Click on title to read paper summary.)

In a recent paper published in PNAS, co-leads Barbara Fischer (KLI & University of Vienna) along with Katharina Pink (Medical University of Vienna) and team reported that female Japanese macaques, despite having the same pelvis-to-fetal-head ratio as female humans, do not suffer the same birth complications as human mothers. This is supported by evidence from a long-term demographic data showing zero maternal mortality linked to childbirth in these non-human primates. This study contributes to our current understanding of the interplay between pelvic morphology and birth dynamics and provides further insights into how to provide better care for human mothers to lessen complications during physiological births. The study made it to the cover of the journal.

KLI fellow Anne Le Maître, along with colleagues from the Société d'Anthropologie de Paris coordinated a special issue of the Bulletins et Mémoires de la Société d'Anthropologie de Paris (BMSAP) on the topic, "Invasive, micro-invasive and non-invasive analysis of anthropobiological remains. How and why?” This special issue comprises several articles stemming from the presentations given during the 2023 annual meeting of the Société d'Anthropologie de Paris. (Click on title to continue)

This reading group is loosely but seriously centered around agency.

The Vienna Science Studies Lab is an intra-institution initiative revived this winter by the KLI, UPSalon UniVie, and the In/human project at CEU. A reading group on Feminist STS is the first event.

“...from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved...” (Darwin 1859) But what about the time before the ‘so simple’ beginning? Does evolutionary theory apply there? Let's ask Schoenmakers et al.!

Guido Caniglia took up his position as Scientific Director of the KLI in November 2018.

We welcome Harold de Vladar to the KLI.

The September issue of our journal, Biological Theory, is now out.

We welcome Javier SUAREZ (University of Barcelona) who will work on his project "Stability of Traits as the Kind of Stability that Matters: Holobionts as Units of Selection."