Sara
Sherwood
Wright

[CV as of Sept 2008]
[email me]

office: Peabody Museum 53G
email: sswright at fas.harvard.edu
phone: 617-496-8991

I am a student/researcher broadly interested in human evolution, working toward my PhD in biological anthropology.

Thesis Research
Other Research and Interests
Research Support
Teaching

Thesis Research

Right now, my work centers on the evolution of the eccrine sweat system. Humans, like most mammals, have two kinds of sweat glands, apocrine glands and eccrine glands. Apocrine glands secrete an oily, sometimes odorous secretion and in humans are mostly confined to the armpits and pubic region. In other mammals they are more widely distributed. Eccrine glands are distributed all over the body surface in humans and are used primarily in thermoregulation. Other mammals have much more limited eccrine sweat systems, in most cases confined to the footpads and used in adhesion friction (ie, for grasping).

We don't know very much about when or how the transition from the common mammalian pattern of eccrine gland distribution to the derived human pattern occurred. Most hypotheses consider the spread of eccrine glands and loss of fur in humans to be intricately linked adaptations in the human lineage. However, we know almost nothing about the eccrine systems in other primates, so my project has a strong comparative component.

In addition to the widespread distribution of eccrine glands, humans have eccrine systems that are developmentally and physiologically very labile, that is, systems that can be ‘adjusted’ in terms of both form and function based on various environmental conditions encountered. I am interested in understanding how such plasticity evolved—what are the conditions that selected for plasticity in the eccrine system and what are the costs and benefits involved in maintaining it? Such questions about the evolution of plastic phenotypes remain an important area of inquiry in evolutionary biology.

I anticipate three major areas for my thesis research: 1) a large-scale comparative study of the distribution of eccrine glands in nonhuman primates, 2) targeted studies of developmental and physiological plasticity the eccrine systems of humans, and 3) matched studies of plasticity in nonhuman primate models.

Other Research and Interests

I have a broad range of interests in human evolution. I’ve done projects dealing with faunal fossil assemblages from Neandertal sites, taxononmy of tree shrews (an order of mammals closely related to primates), and how substrate use affects the shape of phalanges (finger bones) in model animals. I’ve also had the opportunity to do field work at human paleontological sites in Northern Kenya with the Koobi Fora Field School and the Turkana Basin Institute.

Research Support

My research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Harvard University Department of Anthropology. I work in the Skeletal Biology Lab at Harvard, run by my advisor, Daniel E. Lieberman .

Teaching

I love to teach. I currently teach a lab for LS 2, Evolutionary Human Physiology and Anatomy. My office hours are Tu 9-11 am, or by appointment, in Peabody 53G. I also have also been a teaching fellow for OEB 121a, Advanced Structure and Function of the Vertebrates. I have taught literacy and English as foreign language to elementary, secondary, and adult students in the US, Ecuador, and Mozambique.