Uncategorized Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Anthro Primatology @ Emory

Evan Cunningham

My primary research interest is studying the endocrinological mechanisms underlying social behaviors, with particular attention to how these hormonal building blocks enable behavioral flexibility across different species and socioecological conditions. I will be working with wild capuchins at the Taboga field site in Costa Rica as well as captive capuchins at GSU’s Language Research Center […]

Gita Gnanadesikan

As an evolutionary biologist and comparative psychologist, I am fascinated by the diversity of animal behavior and cognition. Why do individuals and species behave so differently from one another? And how do genetics, environment, and experience combine to produce the variation that we observe? My dissertation focused on assistance dogs, designing and implementing experiments that […]

Giuliana Centofanti

I am interested in sociality and development in wild chimpanzees, specifically within the mother-infant context. During my graduate studies, I plan to study orphan outcomes and adoption as part of a larger project on sociality and variation in development. I am particularly interested in quantifying outcomes of development by directly and indirectly measuring fitness. Creating […]

Federico Sánchez Vargas

I am broadly interested in the evolution of social cognition, the potentially reciprocal relationship between different domains of cognition and positioning in the social hierarchy, and the ecological factors and proximate neuroendocrine mechanisms that may help explain social and cognitive complexity in capuchins. Why have capuchins convergently evolved to be the “apes of the New […]

Bre Myers

I’m interested in behavioral strategies that may influence infection risk or severity of disease in African great apes, such as avoiding other individuals or groups, avoiding contaminants, and ingestion of plants or other substances that mitigate the risk and/or symptoms of infection. I would like to explore this through the lens of life history and […]

Amber Shaw

Amber Shaw is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology at Emory University, specializing in biological anthropology with a focus on aging and disease prevention. Her interdisciplinary research bridges behavioral science and molecular biology, utilizing non-invasive techniques and biomarkers to investigate aging in wild chimpanzee populations at Gombe Stream National Park. Amber’s work explores […]