J. B. Plotkin

Drift as a driver of language change: An artificial language experiment

This study tests hypotheses about language change by experimentally manipulating drift and selection in an artificial language task, finding drift alone can explain regularization of low-frequency words.

What we talk about when we talk about color

The paper quantifies communicative needs for colors across 130 languages and finds non-uniform demand, correlating with salient objects and geographic factors.

Evolutionary rescue through partly heritable phenotypic variability

This study develops a population-genetic model to show that partly heritable phenotypic variability can increase population persistence in changing environments, but too much heritability reduces its benefit.

Evolution of empathetic moral evaluation

This study uses evolutionary game theory to show that empathetic moral evaluation promotes cooperation by reducing unjustified defection and that empathy can evolve through social contagion.

Selection for protein stability enriches for epistatic interactions

The paper shows that small non-additive contributions to folding free energy are essential for protein stability, compatible with observed additive mutation effects.