Dr Brandon Wheeler has secured a grant of $7,500 from the AAPA (American Association of Physical Anthropologists) under their Cobb Professional Development scheme. It is for a project entitled ‘The evolutionary origins of primate sociality: finding a missing piece of the puzzle.’
The goal of this research programme is to measure, in multiple primate-predator systems, the key variables necessary to model the predator-related costs and benefits of group size. By outfitting predators with custom-designed bio-loggers coupled with novel automated playback systems, it will be possible to measure predator hunting behavior in both natural and experimental contexts, and thus fill in the missing pieces needed to solve one of the longest-standing puzzles in evolutionary anthropology.