Melanie Fenton Awarded Grant from Leakey
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- Published: Thursday, 13 December 2018 15:11
CHES Graduate Affiliate Melanie Fenton was just awarded a major grant from the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation to support her dissertation research "Coercive and affiliative mating tactics in olive baboons (Papio anubis)”. Melanie just arrived in Kenya a few weeks ago to commence this research. More details about her field study can be found at the CHES webpage for the Albert Fellows Dissertation Award. Congratulations Melanie!
Yesterday CHES held another “Featured Research Evening”, this time showcasing the work of CHES Graduate Affiliate Tim Bransford. For the research that forms the basis of the PhD dissertation he is currently writing, Tim investigated how wild orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) mothers modulate their diet and activity to meet their energetic demands while lactating as well as to buffer their infants from uncertain and variable energy availability. To do this, he had to collect data on orangutan behavior and physiology (from urine samples) as well as phenological data on forest productivity. Tim also talked at length about what it's like doing field research in the peat swamp forests of Borneo.
Last night was the first of this academic year’s “Featured Research Evenings”, which showcased the work of Dr. Jin Xing, Associate Professor of Genetics here at Rutgers. Jin discussed how the significantly declining costs of genome sequencing is facilitating many new research opportunities, such as clarifying phylogenies (evolutionary trees), the action of natural selection to produce adaptation, and population-level phenomena (such as disease occurrence, divergence times, the nature of extinct ancestors). One of the projects in which Jin has been involved recently is examining genetic diversity in the genus Macaca, which comprises more than 20 species of macaque monkeys in Asia and north Africa. The research has greatly improved our understanding of the genetic diversity and evolution of this group of primates as well as general principles of evolution. It was a very rewarding discussion, one consequence of which was generating ideas for some new lines of research (and teaching) for some of the other CHES members present.
At this year's NorthEastern Evolutionary Primatology (NEEP) conference (
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