Michael Gurven

About

Michael Gurven's research is informed by human behavioral ecology and life history theory, which seek to explain variation in behavior and physiological systems as adaptive solutions to the competing demands of growth, development, maintenance, and reproduction. His research focuses primarily on the biodemography of human lifespan and aging, with a secondary focus on child development, intergenerational transfers, and familial organization. Additionally, he studies social and economic behavior among foragers and forager-farmers. Gurven is interested in both ultimate and proximate explanations for the diversity of pro-social behaviors observed in small-scale, traditional populations as well as in large-scale modern societies. These research interests have culminated in the Tsimane Life History and Health Project, which has been funded by NIH/NIA and NSF since 2002. He has conducted fieldwork with two South American indigenous populations, the Ache of Paraguay and the Tsimane of Bolivia.

Research topics

• Biology
• Medicine
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Ecology
• Demography
• Social psychology
• Political Science
• Endocrinology
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Daily energy expenditure through the human life course

  Science · 2021 · 570 citations

  Total daily energy expenditure ("total expenditure") reflects daily energy needs and is a critical variable in human health and physiology, but its trajectory over the life course is poorly studied. We analyzed a large, diverse database of total expenditure measured by the doubly labeled water method for males and females aged 8 days to 95 years. Total expenditure increased with fat-free mass in a power-law manner, with four distinct life stages. Fat-free mass-adjusted expenditure accelerates ra…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A standard calculation methodology for human doubly labeled water studies

  Cell Reports Medicine · 2021 · 130 citations

  over this size range that agrees well with indirect calorimetry (average difference 0.64%; SD = 12.2%). We propose adoption of these equations in future studies.

  DOI

• Energy compensation and adiposity in humans

  Current Biology · 2021 · 121 citations

  This suggestion has profound implications for both the evolution of metabolism and human health. It implies that a long-term increase in activity does not directly translate into an increase in total energy expenditure (TEE) because other components of TEE may decrease in response-energy compensation. We used the largest dataset compiled on adult TEE and basal energy expenditure (BEE) (n = 1,754) of people living normal lives to find that energy compensation by a typical human averages 28% due t…

  PublisherDOI

• WEIRD bodies: mismatch, medicine and missing diversity

  Evolution and Human Behavior · 2020 · 118 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  DOI

• The life history of human foraging: Cross-cultural and individual variation

  Science Advances · 2020 · 107 citations

  Human adaptation depends on the integration of slow life history, complex production skills, and extensive sociality. Refining and testing models of the evolution of human life history and cultural learning benefit from increasingly accurate measurement of knowledge, skills, and rates of production with age. We pursue this goal by inferring hunters' increases and declines of skill from approximately 23,000 hunting records generated by more than 1800 individuals at 40 locations. The data reveal a…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• The Human Life Course and the Biodemography of Aging

  NIH · $289k · 2015–2015

• Doctoral Dissertation Research: The skeletal biology of porous cranial lesions

  NSF · $31k · 2020–2021

• Doctoral Dissertation Improvement: Maternal reproductive trade-offs and the duration of exclusive breastfeeding in a natural fertility population

  NSF · $23k · 2012–2015

Frequent coauthors

• Hillard Kaplan

  251 shared

• Jonathan Stieglitz

  173 shared

• Benjamin C. Trumble

  Arizona State University

  123 shared

• Aaron D. Blackwell

  74 shared

• Paul L. Hooper

  Chapman University

  65 shared

• Christopher von Rueden

  65 shared

• Bret Beheim

  Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

  62 shared

• Thomas S. Kraft

  University of Utah

  49 shared

Labs

• UNM-UCSB Tsimane Health and Life History ProjectPI

Education

• Ph.D., Anthropology

  University of New Mexico

  2000

• Dual B.A., Anthropology, Mathematics

  Pennsylvania State University

  1996

Similar researchers at University of California, Santa Barbara

• Leda Cosmidesh-75
• Douglas J. Kennetth-70
• Jon Erlandsonh-58