Hugo Reyes-Centeno HEVA (Human Evolution & Virtual Anthropology Lab) EduceLab

Dr. Hugo Reyes-Centeno is an evolutionary anthropologist specializing on the emergence of modern human anatomy and behavior over the last million years. In addition, he conducts inter-disciplinary research on human biocultural diversity and the study of natural and cultural heritage worldwide. Prior to joining the University of Kentucky in 2020 as Assistant Professor of Anthropology, he served as Scientific Coordinator and co-founder of the Center for Advanced Studies “Words, Bones, Genes, Tools” at the University of Tübingen (Germany), where he also completed a dissertation in the Institute of Archaeological Science and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironments. His research has appeared in Cell, PNAS, Journal of Human Evolution, and PLoS Genetics, among other venues. He has performed paleontological and archaeological fieldwork in France, Italy, Peru, the Philippines, and Spain. Currently, he serves as Co-PI of the NSF-funded EduceLab: Infrastructure for Next Generation Heritage Science.

Abstract: Despite consensus on the emergence of anatomically modern humans in Africa and their subsequent dispersal into the rest of the world, the mode and timing of these processes remain controversial topics. In addressing them, data on human anatomical and genomic variation have sometimes generated conflicting inferences. Therefore, approaches that consider both lines of evidence under a common theoretical framework are important for reconciling competing evolutionary models. In this talk, I highlight research that tests competing models of human dispersal out of Africa, which applies quantitative genetic and population genetic methods to anatomical and genomic data. I discuss the caveats of these conclusions, including the influence of admixture between modern humans and other hominins. Furthermore, I examine how these findings align with the known human fossil record and a growing inventory of ancient genomes from archaeological and paleontological contexts. Finally, I review how ongoing field and laboratory projects in Eastern Africa, Southeast Asia, and South America shed light on human evolution, adaptations, and dispersals.

Dr. Mansi Srivastava Srivastava Lab

Abstract: Wound repair and regeneration are fundamental features of animal biology, yet little is

known about how these pathways compare across animal lineages. The goals of my research

program are: 1) to identify cellular and genetic mechanisms for whole-body regeneration, and 2) to

create a framework for rigorous cross-species comparisons to understand the evolution of

regeneration. In this talk, I will discuss how we utilize a diversity of approaches including functional

genomics, single-cell RNA-sequencing, and transgenesis to uncover the mechanisms of regeneration

and stem cell regulation in Hofstenia miamia, an acoel worm. In particular, I will highlight how

studying embryonic development informs these questions.

Bio: Mansi received her A.B. in Biological Sciences from Mount Holyoke College, where she became

fascinated by the process of regeneration and wrote her honors thesis on regeneration in

segmented worms. She studied animal evolution using comparative genomics for her Ph.D. in

Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley. For her postdoctoral training

at the Whitehead Institute/MIT, Mansi returned to her interest in regeneration and developed the

acoel Hofstenia miamia a.k.a. the three-banded panther worm as a new research organism for

studying the evolution of regeneration. In 2015, Mansi joined the faculty of Organismic and

Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University and became a Curator in Invertebrate Zoology at the

Museum of Comparative Zoology. Mansi’s research group uses panther worms to develop new

approaches for studying both the mechanisms and evolution of regeneration.