“Our work with baboons has helped us understand that the social environment is just as important as the physical environment for determining health and survival”

After receiving the 15th BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology, Susan Alberts shares in this interview the main contributions of her research on the social lives of baboons. Drawing on decades of fieldwork, she explains how relationships between individuals influence survival, health, and reproductive success, revealing the deep connection between sociability and evolution. Her perspective offers a renewed understanding of cooperation, social bonds, and the dynamics that sustain animal societies.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Ecology and Conservation Biology has gone in this fifteenth edition to Susan C. Alberts, Jeanne Altmann and Marlene Zuk “for their outstanding contributions to the behavioral and evolutionary ecology of animals,” in the words of the award citation.