The 10^th anniversary of the Human Behavior & Evolution Society was celebrated appropriately at Davis with a great line-up of plenary speakers and a wealth of interesting talks and posters. The local hosts and program committee deserve our thanks. It was a terrific meeting.

While there was a wonderful diversity of topics on the program some themes were perhaps over-represented among the many possibilities that human affairs could offer. As usual, sex and violence were well represented on the program. But what about that third category of the hypothalamic triumvirate: food? Even a paper by Lieberman, Cosmides and Tooby on disgust reactions was about sex (incest, more specifically) rather than (in)edibles.

Until DNA testing revealed the extent and crypticity of polyandrous matings among our feathered friends, the biannual meetings of the International Society of Behavioral Ecology were dominated by papers on foraging. Not to say that HBESers haven’t done some fine theoretical and empirical research on foraging among hunter-gatherers (see, for example, Smith & Winterhalder, Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior 1992) nor that foraging was completely ignored at HBES 98. For example, one of the meeting’s hosts, Lore Ruttan, addressed the conditions favoring cooperation among commercial fishermen with respect to sharing information on the whereabouts of fish. Gurven and Kaplan presented a life history model of allocation of time and efforts for peoples in a traditional Amazonian economy/ecology. And D.H. MacDonald and Hewlett’s study of ranging distance of hunter-foragers suggested that they are finding more than food! But the eats hardly ever seemed to be central.

Ages ago I heard a fun talk by Suzanne Weghorst (Northern Technologies, U. Washington) at the Animal Behavior Society meeting. Optimal foraging models (sensu Charnov, Krebs & Stephens.) were applied with the rigorous methodology of behavioral scan-sampling to people shopping at a California supermarket. Of course, the risk of not finding a valued protein-package may be rather low in this kind of foraging habitat, but there are still possibilities for establishing networks of reciprocity and showing off after a successful foraging trip and maybe enhancing one’s mate value.

Another very entertaining talk at Animal Behavior years ago was by Heather Fowler (Rutgers, Anthropology), who had interviewed relatively affluent women about someone

they’d fallen in love with. Fowler asked, "What is it about the man that is sexually attractive?" You won’t be surprised to learn that status, money, and intelligence were mentioned. But what fascinated Fowler was that every single interviewee mentioned food in her description of the moment she first realized that she was falling in love with the guy. There were detailed descriptions of the meal at the restaurant or the dinner he had prepared or some very favorite morsel of food. Obviously, there’s great potential for further studies of courtship feeding!

And it’s not just potential mates who are impressed by a good dinner. The potlatches of the Northwest Coast Indians of North America are famous for their displays of disposable wealth, including huge dinner parties. Banquets and feasts are central features of art and literature throughout history and around the world. In Cooking, cuisine, and class, the anthropologist Jack Goody argued that complex cuisines requiring extraordinary preparation time and a sophisticated palate have been limited to highly status-differentiated societies like India, China, and France. Presumably, the local cuisine developed in the context of displays of wealth much like the potlatch. Wouldn’t this arena of social competition and display lend itself to the kind of analysis and argument espoused by Geoffrey Miller at HBES 95 with respect to the pop music industry?

Another great adaptationist theme has been specific appetites and aversions. Everyone knows about the Garcia effect: aversion to a specific food after one trial learning with long interval between the conditioned stimulus (food item) and nausea. This mechanism creates new aversions, but there are many other very specific aversions. Margie Profet (Protecting your baby-to-be, 1995) has made a persuasive case that food aversions in the first trimester of pregnancy are especially likely for those foods containing toxins that are easily tolerated by an adult but not by the developing nervous system of the fetus. Paul Rozin (Psychology, U. Pennsylvania)has done a ton of entertaining and enlightening experiments on disgust and aversions to foods. It’s not just poisons, as Rozin elucidates culture-specific food aversions, as well as age-related phenomena such as aversions to hot chili peppers in childhood. Elizabeth Cashdan, our co-host for HBES 99 at the University of Utah, has a very nice story (theory and data) about developmental changes in the appetites of children in relation to their need to learn about food and avoid toxic mimics.

Did you see the recent paper by Billing & Sherman, "Antimicrobial functions of spices: why some like it hot" (Quarterly Review of Biology 73: 3-49, 1998)? They did an imaginative study of recipes from traditional cookbooks of meat-based cuisine around the world. Their hypothesis that spice plant secondary compounds are powerful antibacterial and antifungal agents was supported. What else will the family cookbooks tell us? Aunt Sarah’s mayonnaise or Cousin John’s chocolate chip cookies might reveal new insights about kinship networks. Many of us seem to have aversions to novel and diverse menus for the workday breakfast, but are quite happy to never repeat a dinner recipe. Of course, not everywhere in the world are people so pre-occupied by the novelty, subtlety, and presentation of a meal as we are in recent times. And the fact that we spend a day’s wages on a dining experience suggests other avenues for investigating mate choice and social competition.

A single act of sex or violence might have higher costs or benefits than a single act of ingestion, but it seems to me that food may consume more of our evolved psyche’s total time and attention over the lifetime. I hope we’ll see this topic more prominently on future HBES programs.

Your gourmand President,

Margo Wilson

President Margo Wilson called the meeting to order.

1. Kevin MacDonald read the minutes from the 1997 Business Meeting at the University of Arizona. The minutes were approved.

2. Patrick McKim gave the Treasurer’s Report. Current membership is 720. The society has $15,000 in the bank of which $4,700 is not earmarked for anticipated expenses. There is $1,500 in the Student Fund.

McKim noted that a printed membership directory would cost approximately $5,000 and there was a general discussion on possible alternatives to the printed version for cost-saving purposes. It was suggested that the society develop an electronic version of the directory. An informal vote was taken on whether the directory should be published in hardcopy or electronic form; the electronic form was the marginal winner. After the show of hands, reservations were expressed about the electronic version centering on the issue of whether such a version would be "secure" from widespread circulation. The issue of format of the membership directory was not resolved and will be discussed further by the Executive Council, but there appeared to be unanimous agreement for publishing a directory.

3. Ruth Bennett, the Student Representative, reported that there are currently 160 active student members on the graduate student electronic network. Barry Friedman, Department of Psychology at the University of Texas, will be the new Student Representative. Bennett made a plea for more funds to support student travel. Members were encouraged to provide suggestions on sources of funding for students.

4. Margo Wilson thanked the organizers of the UC-Davis conference. They are: Monique Borgerhoff-Mulder, Denise Cummins, and Debra Judge, Peter Richerson, and Joanna Scheib. She also announced that the 1999 meetings will be held at the University of Utah. Local hosts, Elizabeth Cashdan

and Alan Rogers, asked the membership for suggestions on organizing the conference. Suggestions for the program should be sent to Steve Gangestad, Chair of the Program Committee.

Wilson announced that the HBES conference will be held

at Amherst College in 2000, with Bill Zimmerman as local host. No host has been designated for the 2001 conference. Geoffrey Miller asked whether HBES would ever consider holding the annual meeting in Europe, and specifically London, England. Ruth Bennett and others expressed concern that students would not be able to afford the travel costs. Nesse said that it would cost no more for easterners than the airfare from the east coast to Davis. It was agreed that HBES executive council, including the student representative, would prepare a financial assessment of the costs for a London meeting.

5. Martin Daly, co-editor of Evolution and Human Behavior, reported that E&HB had caught up to its publication schedule after nine issues as the society’s journal. The lag between final revision and publication of papers is now three months, and the lag between receipt and editorial decision is 66 days. Submissions have increased from 65 in the 1996–1997 volume to 79 in the 1997–1998 volume. Daly encouraged submissions of papers in the humanities.

6. Randy Nesse, Chair of the Publications Committee, reported that the society’s website is going well under the direction of Michael Mills. Kevin MacDonald was the editor of the society’s newsletter for the past year. Bill Zimmerman will be the new editor of the newsletter, beginning with the next issue. HBES-L, the society’s electronic bulletin board, is now under the direction of Mark Flinn; brief messages announcing the publication of books and articles are encouraged. Jane Lancaster, editor of Human Nature, will send notices to members to encourage them to ask their libraries to subscribe. Human Nature leans toward anthropology, but papers in other areas are encouraged. Presently 1068 individuals and 303 institutions (twenty less than last year) subscribe to E&HB. Science Citation Index has ranked E&HB in citation frequency 11th out of 96 journals in zoology and fourth out of 11 journals in biological psychology.

7. Margo Wilson announced that the proposed amendments to the constitution will be voted on next spring via a ballot in the newsletter along with the election ballots.

8. Wilson described different voting methods in society elections. Presently we use the "first past the post" rule (as do Animal Behavior Society and American Anthropological Association), but there are a variety of ranking procedures used by other societies (e.g. American Psychological Association). Information about the merits for alternative voting procedures should be sent to Linda Mealey who will compile a list for further discussion.

Wilson concluded the meeting by noting that HBES is a leader and a model for cross-disciplinary societies.

The meeting adjourned at 1:20 PM.

Submitted by Kevin MacDonald, Secretary/Archivist

These minutes have not been approved.

HBES 1999 Conference. The 11^th annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society will be held at The University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City, June 2-6,1999. The University is a 20-minute drive from the Salt Lake International Airport, and accommodation will be available both in University dorms and in the nearby University Park Hotel. The program committee chair is Steven Gangestad (sgangest@unm.edu), and the local organizers are Alan Rogers (rogers@anthro.utah.edu) and Elizabeth Cashdan (cashdan@ anthro.utah.edu). S.G. is in the Dept. of Psychology and A.R. and E.C. are in the Dept. of Anthropology, Univ. Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112. Abstracts for papers are due March 1 and abstracts for symposia are due February 1.

The weather in early June in Salt Lake should be balmy with little chance of rain. Expect high temperatures in the upper 70s, lows in the low 50s. The University is at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, site of most of the venues for the 2002 winter Olympics. You might want to come a few days early and explore the region. National parks within a day's drive of Salt Lake City include Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Canyonlands, and Grand Teton. We will try to arrange trips to regional and local attractions for those able to come to the meetings earlier in the week.

Details on abstracts and excursions will be forthcoming on the meeting web page (http://kimura.anthro.utah.edu/ hbes99) and in the next HBES newsletter. Two other web sites with relevant information are http://www.itsnet.com/home/ getlost/utah.html (for general tourist information and links to related web sites) and http://www.infowest.com/Utah/ index.html (for information about travel outside the Salt Lake City region).

The awards were presented at the 1998 conference at the University of California at Davis. Winner of New Investigator Competition:, $500 Prize: Nicholas Pound, Department of

Psychology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario,

CANADA, L8S 4K1, title: "Polyandry in contemporary pornography". Winner of Post-Doctoral Competition, $500 Prize: Frank Marlowe, 3333 Madera Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90039, title: "Showoffs or Providers?: The Parenting Effort of Hadza Men". Co-Winners of Poster Competition, $250 Prize: Laura Dane, Department Of Psychology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, B.C., CANADA, title: "The impact of women's expected economic status on their mate preferences: comparing sexual selection and sociocultural predictions". $50 Prize: J. Eshleman, Department of Anthropology, UC-Davis, $50 Prize: J. Greenberg, Department of Anthropology, UC-Davis, $50 Prize: A. Ortolani, Department of Anthropology, UC-Davis, $50 Prize: M. George Cramer, Department of Anthropology, UC-Davis, $50 Prize: M. Borgerhoff-Mulder, Department of Anthropology, UC-Davis, *title: "Phylogenetically controlled comparisons in anthropology: a study of African lineage systems".

International Network for Social Network Analysis, INSNA, meeting: Sunbelt XIX International Sunbelt Social Network Conference, Feb. 18-21, 1999, Hawthorn Suites Hotel, Charleston, S.C., deadline for abstracts: Dec. 15, 1998. This conference, sponsored by INSNA and the Dept. of Sociology at the University of North Caroline, is a forum for social scientists, mathematicians, computer scientists, and others interested in social networks. The conference provides an opportunity for those interested in the theory and methods or applications of social networks to share ideas and common interests. Conference information will be updated regularly at the INSNA web site: http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/project/INSNA/.

Session topics include: Corporate and Inter-organizational networks; Intra-organizational Networks; Personal Community Networks; Networks and Health; Networks and Game Theory; Diffusion; Networks Through Time; Social Support; Cognitive Networks; Biological Networks; HIV/AIDS; Communication Networks; Network Exchange; Methods and Statistics for Network Analysis. This list is preliminary. If you wish to organize a session, contact the organizers at the addresses below. Planned workshops include: Barry Wellman's "A Non-Technical Introduction to Social Network Analysis"; Steve Borgatti and Martin Everett's "Introduction to the Analysis of Network Data"; and Stanley Wasserman and Company "Statistical Methods for Social Networks," and Lin Freeman "Generating Images of Networks".

To submit a paper, send an abstract of no more than 200 words by email or in an ASCII file on diskette for DOS platforms and a hard copy to one of the organizers no later than December 15, 1998: John Skvoretz (skvoretz-john@sc.edu , 803-777-4968) or Katherine Faust ( faust@garnet.cla.sc.edu, 803-777-6848), Dept. of Sociology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, S.C. 29208.

Make your reservations at Hawthorn Suites early. The room blocks will be held only until 17 January 1999. Call 1-800-527-1133 or 1-843-577-2644 or fax 1-843-577-2697. Mention your INSNA connection to get the conference rate: $99.00 for a one bedroom/two double beds suite and $179.00 for a two bedroom suite plus taxes of 12%.

Pre-registration is $50.00 for INSNA members, $75.00 for non-members, $25.00 for students, and $15.00 for registration-in-absentia for INSNA members ($30.00 for non-members). All fees will be $10.00 higher for registration at the conference. There are additional fees for attendance at individual workshops. Deadline for pre-registration is 1 February 1999. Send requests for registration form to John Skyoretz.

Call for Papers by HBES Members for Submission to Human Nature: An Interdisciplinary, Biosocial Perspective. Human Nature is a quarterly journal that publishes peer-reviewed articles on biosocial factors underlying human behavior. It is published by Aldine de Gruyter (Hawthorne, NY) which offers a subscription discount to HBES members. It is in its tenth year of publication. Over this time a wide variety of papers have been published, including ones on the evolutionary ecology and life history strategies of men and women, bio-aesthetics, criteria for human mate selection, human behavior and conservation of the environment, historical demography, and numerous other topics. Members interested in submitting a manuscript can e-mail the editor, Jane Lancaster, at jlancas@unm.edu for "Instructions to Authors."

Websites for the journals, Evolution and Human Behavior and Human Nature. Elsevier Science, the publisher of Evolution and Human Behavior, maintains a website for its journals. Follow the path from http://www.elsevier.com by searching for E&HB under journals. Information is available on the contents and mailing dates of past issues and on instructions for authors. To subscribe to E&HB, contact the HBES Treasurer Patrick McKim (email: pmckim@calpoly.edu).

Beginning Dec. 1, 1998 an Electronic Directory of HBES members will be available at the website http://www.science.mcmaster.ca/psychology/ehb/ehb.htm. The password is EMMMA (upper case letters must be used) in honor of Darwin’s wife, Emma Wedgwood, who brought him everything he needed to achieve exceptional academic and biological fitness: resources, love, sympathy, beautiful china and (ultimately) lots of children.

Human Nature’s site , http://www.unm.edu/~humnat/, provides information on subscriptions (including discounts for HBES members), submissions, the editorial and review processes, contents of issues since 1990 (the inaugural year) and forthcoming articles.

The electronic bulletin board of HBES (hbes-l) has moved from the University of Arizona to the University of Missouri. Mark Flinn (flinnm@missouri.edu) is the new listowner. If you were previously subscribed to the Arizona site you have been transferred to the Missouri site. If you were not previously subscribed (or you unsubscribed) to hbes-l, you are urged to subscribe to the new list. It is our goal to subscribe every HBES member that has access to e-mail. E-mail is the fastest, most efficient way for information to be distributed to society members.

Hbes-l is currently a low volume board restricted to important society news. It may be expanded a bit in the future to include brief reviews of meetings and publications. If you want to post messages to list HBES-L, you should direct your emails to HBES-L@lists.missouri.edu. If you are uncertain as to whether your note is "important society news," check with Mark Flinn (anthmark@sp2n17-t.missouri.edu) .The open chatroom for discussion of human behavior and evolution issues, hbe-l hbe-l@a3.com, continues unchanged as a separate and distinct bulletin board.

To subscribe to the new list, send the following message in the text (not subject header): SUBSCRIBE HBES-L your name to: listproc@lists.missouri.edu. If you are already subscribed, you will receive a message to that effect.

Mark Flinn

Department of Anthropology

University of Missouri

Columbia, MO 65211

(573) 882-9404

Members of HBES agree about most things relating to human behavior and its biology, but the place of the study of culture remains deeply controversial, in the sense that there is disagreement about methodology, the character of the material under consideration, what is to be explained, and even as to how these explanations relate to the general theory of human biology and behavior. That they do fit, somehow and in a way which is both integral and scientifically revealing, is a widely held presumption, but this does not serve to define a core theoretical position differentiating Darwinian analyses of culture from other treatments, since many of our non-Darwinian colleagues in the social sciences and humanities also share this belief. In short, there is as much, or little less, variety of opinion and method within HBES on the issue of culture as there is in the outside world. Nevertheless, the concentration of effort now taking place within the society, as apparent at the Davis conference in the large number of papers concerned with cultural matters, promises to bring changes to this confused mixture of positions. At present the transformation is rather a clarification of diversity than a synthesis, and the field is still in a primitive state, notwithstanding local areas of sophistication and some wishful thinking. Nevertheless the probable directions of development are already evident.

One of the most prominent lines of research, much in evidence at Davis, is that which takes cultural materials and examines them as evidence, sometimes very indirect evidence, of an evolved psychology. Such studies are concerned with what cultural things, texts, and constructed images for example, can tell us about psychological structures, and at present the objects themselves are handled as if they were, relatively speaking, unproblematic. Consequently these studies mostly invoke what is presumed to be a secure interpretation of the content of cultural materials, such as narratives or visual images, which is then used to lead to infer preferences and their underlying psychological mechanisms. The explanandum is human psychology, and cultural objects are data towards the required explanation. While there is nothing to quarrel with in the direction of this analytic choice, on the contrary it should be applauded, to someone trained in cultural research it seems

that the data itself is often scanted, so swift is the psychological turn.

By contrast, those with backgrounds in the critical humanities are more likely to be concerned with prestigious cultural materials, a small subsection of the overall field, and present psychological considerations as providing a new and authoritative vocabulary for the support of critical interpretations and evaluations of these interpretations. It is not the case, however, that the cultural materials themselves here replace psychology as the subject under consideration. Rather, instead of looking for causal explanations of why generations of individuals have concluded that works of art matter, the

importance of the arts, as a general category, is insisted upon

through demonstrative exegesis. In such cases the value of the arts is the central subject of concern, and evolutionary theories of human nature are used to brace claims for the reality of this value, which thus continually threatens, as it does in traditional idealist aesthetics, to become an absolute. However, if there was any trend to be identified in the range of papers presented at Davis it is that this evolutionary criticism is neither developing nor gaining fresh support, but instead that more researchers are attempting to frame their projects in ways that will be of interest to both those who aim at modeling and explaining psychologies, and for those who wish to understand why cultures, or more properly speaking, cultural distributions, are as they are. That this entails supplying the empirical deficiency evident in much cultural research work inside and outside HBES is now apparently better understood than it was a few years ago, and a large number of the presentations reported new bodies of facts, including several speakers on cultural transmission, an area long familiar with this requirement. It seems likely that as this more rigorous commitment to detail becomes widespread amongst those familiar with the difficulties of marshalling interpretations, and I am here thinking of those with knowledge of the literary fields, the employment of content analysis for psychological inference will itself become more sophisticated, possibly, even, experimental.

A diversity of ways of examining culture will, and should, remain, with researchers choosing to frame their questions either in terms of cultural objects or of the psychologies which generate and sustain, or simply sustain those objects, certain large-scale projects even being composed of composites made up of both types. We will know that this stage has arrived when there is consensus about the ontological character of cultural things, or at least as much consensus as there now is with regard to what sort of thing a mind is. The fact that culture is still a nebulous concept amongst us, with a great deal of uncertainty as to whether a culture is a single object, a population of objects, or whether it is an object at all, suggests that we need to embrace the much repeated advice to take our naturalism, and by this we mean our physicalism, more seriously than we in fact do. It might even be that psychologists, particularly cognitive psychologists, would benefit from that disciplining of the imagination which comes with materialism. Certainly, in cultural research it would save us all a lot of time.

Faculty of Integrated Human Studies,

Kyoto University, Sakyo-ku

Kyoto 606-8501,

JAPAN.

Fax: 075 753 6647

The tenth annual meeting of HBES was rewarding for students of biopoetics, the application of evolutionary psychology to the arts. Besides the considerable stimulation we gain from hearing reports about work in other areas of biosocial research, fully seventeen papers bearing on the arts were presented--the most ever. Thanks to the thoughtfulness of the Davis organizing committee, these papers were scheduled so that those interested could attend all of them.

But for members of HBES's arts caucus, even this cornucopia was not enough. Daniel Rancour- Laferriere and I arranged a biopoetics mini-conference for July 12-13, immediately after the HBES meetings. A large gathering of twenty five were on hand as these additional panels opened on Sunday with a roundtable discussion on standards for scholarship. Martin Daly, co-editor of "Evolution and Human Behavior," Denis Dutton, editor of "Philosophy and Literature," and Brian Hansen, a member of the editorial board for "Human Nature," discussed the differing dissiderata of their journals. Another roundtable discussion on the evolutionary origin and adaptive functions of the arts followed. Various hypotheses and general problems were discussed by Joseph Carroll, Ellen Dissanayake, Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, Francis Steen, Koen DePryck, Denis Dutton and Camilla Power. Six papers were circulated prior to the session discussion. The rest of Sunday was devoted to dispositions concerning Gary Cox's outline of how neural circuits underlay aesthetic response and Brett Cooke's study of kin altruism in Tolstoy's "War and Peace." Probably the highlight of the biopoetics meeting was the lively debate concerning Ellen Dissanayake's "making special," much the best demonstrated hypothesis in biopoetics. Joseph Carroll questioned the usefulness of "making special" as a critical tool. Brian Hansen, Nancy Aiken, and I spoke in its defense before Dissanayake integrated our comments in her summary remarks.

The meeting concluded on Monday morning with a discussion of four more papers. Nancy Aiken presented intriguing evidence of aesthetic behavior by household pets. Artur Stern raised the idea of a "metabiopoetics," an approach that incorporates evolutionary theory itself as an influences in the composition of poetry. Neil Greenberg traced neurophysiological links between stress and creativity and Koen DePryck and Catharina Boullart discussed how the burial of Philip the Great of Macedonia was "made special" by following Homeric models.

Brian Hansen will organize biopoetics activities at the 1999 HBES annual meeting in Salt Lake City next June. Those interested in participating should contact him at bhansen@unm.edu.

Modern and Classical Languages

Texas A&M University

College Station, T X, 77843-4238

Fax: 409 845 6421

This was one of the best HBES meetings that I've attended and I want to thank the program planning committee and conference hosts for doing such a wonderful job.

All six plenary sessions were especially good, and they covered a broad range of topics. Alan Rogers started us off with "The Molecular Record of Human Population History". I particularly enjoyed Peter Ellison's discussion of the physiology of human reproductive effort. Much of the material (and the perspective) was new and very interesting. Just as interesting was Mariko Hiraiwa-Hasegawa's insights into homicide in Japan and Nancy Burley's presentation of her work on mate choice in birds. Richard Nisbett both informed and entertained us with his keynote address on the culture of honor in the South (just to inform those of you who have not lived in the South, it' is a particularly bad idea to threaten a Southern man's honor!). In her talk "Seeing is Believing" Catherine Eckel discussed social signaling in economic games, and Gerd Gigerenzer ended the conference with a wonderful talk on ecological intelligence.

There were many interesting and stimulating talks and discussions on such topics as parental investment, life history, cognitive adaptations, homicide, reproductive strategies, emotion, altruism, and philosophy. I particularly enjoyed the entire session on fluctuating asymmetry (FA). How a person’s physical attractiveness is perceived was particularly intriguing. However, everyone seemed to refer to Gangestad and Thornhill's results before Steve Gangestad finally was able to present their study (The Scent of Symmetry). Joanna Scheib's discussion of the possible role of social support in female reproduction flowed nicely from Ellison's previous plenary talk. Frank Sulloway's use of direct sibling comparisons to find personality differences was quite interesting. And as a participant in the session on sexuality, I thought everyone gave interesting talks, especially Nick Pound, who won the New Investigator award for his study of pornography and sperm competition.

The issue of behavioral observations versus questionnaires and the connection between "intent" and actual behavior came up during the kin conflict session. Perhaps at a future HBES meeting, there could be a forum for discussing methodology issues that doesn't interfere with discussion of a particular study.

Overall, it was a stimulating and enjoyable conference, thanks to all the participants and to the organizers who did a wonderful job.

Department of Psychology

McMaster University

1280 Main Street West

Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1

CANADA

Report Ruth Bennett There was a strong student presence at the HBES meeting this year , both in attendance and in the presentation of papers. The most pressing issue seemed to be the cost of student attendance. There was also some concern about the related matter of the location of future conferences.

At the executive council meeting, it was announced that Barry Friedman was elected student representative for 1998-99. The council also considered a proposal that future student representatives be responsible for administering travel grants to student-authors of accepted papers on a cost-of-flight basis. Unfortunately, the current budget cannot support such a program. Two suggestions were made:

(1) Travel grants from independent. agencies. The current student representative (Barry Friedman) and I will try to make the information on these resources available on the HBES webpage. If you have funding suggestions you want to add, please e-mail us at bfriedman@mail.utexas.edu, or rbennett@darkwing. uoregon.edu.

One problem is that the submission of abstracts to HBES takes place late in the year, and most funding agencies require proof of the paper's acceptance. The executive council agreed to allow early decisions on abstracts so students can meet application deadlines. Plan ahead!

(2) Travel grants from the Student Fund. All students should encourage their advisors to find contributors to the fund for this purpose.

The HBES-grads list server, formerly run by Robert Kurzban, is being maintained by Debra Lieberman at UCSB. This student-only forum has been very quiet, but we hope it will be used more in the future for discussion of research and ideas. To join, contact Debra at hbes-grads-request@psych.ucsb.edu.

Our student workshop this year featured Michael McGuire, who described in some detail what the social landscape will be like when most of our careers are underway. We plan to invite him back in a few years so he can assess his prognostications. Please e-mail your suggestions for next year's workshop speaker to Barry Friedman.

The tradition of a Thursday night student dinner/hike continued to be successful. Next year we expect to drop the unpopular and unanticipated "hike" component and more explicitly divide the event into "early-scheduled dinner" and "later-scheduled drinks" components, so as to encourage student attendance at the intervening poster session.

London has been suggested as the location for the HBES conference in 2001. A meeting there would encourage attendance by European student members who cannot afford to come to US conferences, and it has been noted that international airfares from major cities are not more expensive than domestic airfares. On the other hand, eliminating the option to drive to the conference would prohibit attendance by some US students, and the high cost of food, housing, and transportation in London would deter others. Even though many of you may not anticipate still being students in 2001, please think about whether this plan would be in the best interest of future students, and let Barry know your opinion.

Department of Psychology

University of Oregon

Eugene, OR 97403-1227, USA

Electronic Directory of HBES Members. Available on Dec.1, 1998. The password: EMMMA, in capital letters. Send email questions, comments or suggestions about the HBES web site to Michael E. Mills, Dept. Psychology, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA. 90045. email: memills@gmail.com.

Most of us are professional academics, but approximately 20% of us are students. In order to encourage student scholarship, special awards are granted at our annual meetings for the best pre and post-doctoral papers. To finance these awards and other student activities, members are encouraged to donate to the HBES Student Fund. Every little bit helps.