Understanding the effect of seasonal variability on BaYaka children's foraging, cognitive development, and social learning

The Embodied Capital Theory posits that humans have longer childhoods, bigger brains, and greater behavioural flexibility than other primates because it takes longer to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to successfully collect the complex resources consumed by our species.

Despite seasonality being a stable feature of the complex human subsistence niche, no studies to-date have quantitatively investigated the interplay between children's growing foraging abilities, skill development, and spatial cognition in / Page 2 of 15 / ESRC NINE DTP Postgraduate Studentship Nomination Form relation to resource seasonality.

I will thus work with one of the last remaining active forager communities, the Congo Basin BaYaka.

I will investigate seasonal variation in (1) children's foraging returns, (2) social learning and social network patterns, and (3) the development of spatial cognition. Building on my previous fieldwork with BaYaka, I will collect observational, GPS, and experimental data. I will pilot experimental measures during my Masters in Research Methods.

During my PhD, I will conduct two field trips spanning the wet and dry seasons.

My scientific findings will make valuable contributions to psychology, anthropology, and cultural evolution by investigating a key but understudied contextual factor-seasonality-which likely shapes flexible cognitive development now and throughout our evolutionary history. I plan to publish my findings in high-impact venues, and present at conferences in the evolutionary social sciences.

A detailed report of my findings and observations will be shared with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Global-Hub on Indigenous Peoples' Food Systems. Thus, my project will shed light on children's role in Sustainable Development Goal 2 (Zero Hunger).