Sarah Kovalaskas
I have broad interests in the evolution of primate social behavior, especially as it relates to the origins of human cognition and culture. Over the past ten years, I have been involved in research with humans and several different primate species including Bolivian gray-eared titi monkeys (Callicebus donacophilus) in Bolivia, bonobos (Pan paniscus) in the […]
Nicole Furgala
I am interested in the evolutionary origins of social cognition using interdisciplinary methods in evolutionary anthropology and comparative cognition. By adapting socio-cognitive experiments to the field, my research will investigate how capuchin monkeys acquire and utilize social information under ecologically relevant conditions. In doing so, I aim to explore the evolution of Theory of Mind […]
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 […]
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 […]