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On October 9, 2024, the CHES hosted its annual Zelnick-Belzberg Research Night, honoring outstanding CHES graduate students who have produced excellent theses, research, or publications. This year’s awardee, Rebecca Brittain, delivered a fascinating talk on her current research, marking her as the inaugural recipient of the Zelnick-Belzberg Award for Excellence in Research. The evening also featured a community dinner and posters from CHES faculty and students showcasing research from across the globe.
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Dr. Robin Fox, a pioneering figure in the world of anthropology and esteemed founder of the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University, passed away on the morning of January 18, 2024, at the age of 89. His legacy as a scholar, teacher, and mentor will forever shape the landscape of social and biological anthropology.
Born on July 15, 1934, in Yorkshire, England, Dr. Fox dedicated his life to unraveling the complexities of human behavior, social organization, and kinship systems. Throughout his illustrious career, he authored groundbreaking works shedding light on the intricate interplay between culture, biology, and society.
Dr. Fox's seminal contributions include Kinship and Marriage: An Anthropological Perspective, The Imperial Animal, The Tory Islanders: A People of the Celtic Fringe, and Participant Observer: A Memoir of a Transatlantic Life, which have left an indelible mark on the fields of anthropology, sociology, and intellectual history. His interdisciplinary approach and profound insights have inspired generations of scholars to explore the multifaceted nature of human existence with rigor and curiosity.
In addition to his professional endeavors, Dr. Fox was a devoted family man, cherished friend, and passionate advocate for the pursuit of knowledge. His legacy of intellectual curiosity, and dedication will continue to inspire future generations of scholars and thinkers. While we mourn the loss of a visionary scholar, we also celebrate his enduring legacy.
Link to Robin Fox Emeritus Faculty Dept of Anthropology at Rutgers
https://anthro.rutgers.edu/people/emeritus-faculty/91-robin-fox
Link to Obituary for Robin Fox
https://www.captivasanibel.com/2024/02/22/robin-fox/
Link to festschrift in honor of Robin Fox
https://www.amazon.com/The-Character-Human-Institutions-Biosocial/dp/141285377X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407786420&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Character+of+Human+Institutions%20
Link to Wikipedia information about the life and work of Robin Fox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Fox
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CHES faculty and director, Erin Vogel, was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation’s to support her research, “Integrative Wildlife Nutrition: From Molecules to Macro-Ecology” for 2.2 million USD. This award is in collaboration with colleagues, Dr. Katherine Amato (Northwestern University), Dr. Jessica Rothman (Hunter College), Dr. Rosemary Braun (Northwestern University), and Dr. Elizabeth Johnson (Cornell University). The work will examine the relationships between ecology, nutrition, gut microbiome, energetics, and health among 2 primate frugivore communities in Tuanan (Indonesia) and Kibale (Uganda). This is a collaborative effort that would not be possible without our long-term international collaborators at these two field sites and all of the students and researchers that have worked with us over the years. The abstract for this project is below.
ABSTRACT
Food availability often varies extensively in different habitats and across time (i.e., seasons and years). To obtain sufficient nutrients and energy to survive and reproduce, animals must adjust their feeding and nutritional strategies. Most animal feeding ecology research only provides insight into part of an animal’s strategy, but this team will integrate their diverse research expertise—ranging from molecules to behavior to ecosystems—to provide a more holistic understanding. More specifically, the investigators will study six species of primates across seasons in two tropical forests and will integrate data that quantifies how each individual moves through their habitats to find food, what foods it chooses, how the food is digested by the animal itself and by microbes that live in its gut, and how this ultimately affects its physiology and health. Ultimately, the researchers aim to identify a unified principle of animal nutrition that can improve our understanding of how animals respond and adapt to food scarcity. In addition, it will also advance knowledge of microbe-microbe interactions and host-microbe interactions in wild animals and provide new applications for multi-scale data analysis tools. The project will provide hands-on interdisciplinary training to postdoctoral fellows, graduate and undergraduate students, park wardens, and community members, the majority of whom will belong to underrepresented groups in STEM. This project will also involve multiple outreach activities, including workshops on primate ecology, microbiology, genomics, nutrition, and conservation for public urban middle school students.
The project will target six species of wild frugivorous primates--pig-tailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina), redtail monkeys (Cercopithecus ascanius), grey-cheeked mangbeys (Lophocebus albigena), blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis), orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii), and white-bearded gibbons (Hylobates albibarbus)--occupying two long-term field sites (Tuanan Biological Research Station, Indonesia and Kibale National Park, Uganda). Leveraging data collected continuously across seasons at each site for two years, the project will determine the extent to which feeding behavior, nutrient intake, physiology, and microbiome function shift in response to food availability in individual wild, non-human primate species over time (Intra-species Level), compare the relative importance of behavioral, physiological, and microbial strategies for modulating nutrition among sympatric non-human primate species (Inter-species Level), and determine the extent to which non-human primate strategies for modulating nutrition are conserved between forests with different patterns of food availability (Ecosystem Level). The project will facilitate the development of improved models of primate nutrition that can be used to identify unified principles of nutrition that can be tested and applied across a range of ecological contexts and scales.
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Each year, The Zelnick Family Research Fund, an endowment established by the Zelnick-Belzberg Charitable Trust, provides funding for the research of an exemplary CHES graduate affiliate in their second year in the PhD program. This April 2023, we will celebrate and highlight research made possible by CHES and the Zelnick Family at the first CHES Awards Reception! Please email Erin Vogel or Denise Mercado for more information about the event.
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Fred Foster
CHES Graduate Affiliate Fred Foster passed his doctoral dissertation defense on June 15, 2022. Fred’s dissertation, titled “Adaptations in the Structure, Composition, and Properties of Primate Tooth Enamel” applied tools from material science engineering to address problems in the dental ecology humans and primates with diets that include very hard and stiff foods. His projectinvolved extensive laboratory work in the Department of Material Science Engineering at Rutgers, using nanoindentation, scanning electron microscopy, electron microprobe analysis, among other advanced analytic tools to probe the nature of tooth enamel in a number of different species. His results helped to illustrate how our teeth, and the teeth of our closest primate relatives, work to break down the hard and tough foods that we eat without fracturing or wearing out during our lifetime. Fred’s research reframed and highlighted an important concept, that not all tooth enamel is created equal. Deep within our teeth the stiffness of enamel is relaxed to restrain the propagation of fractures that would otherwise limit our dental competence, while at the tooth surface enamel is at its hardest and stiffest to resist wear and chipping. Fred showed that these properties are ubiquitous across primate species, but with variation that reflects adaptations to different diets. Of special interest is Fred’s finding that the mechanical properties of teeth are related to the molecular structure of the hydroxyapatite mineral building blocks of teeth themselves. Within the enamel layer, where lower stiffness is desirable, the hydroxyapatite crystal lattice is spiked with magnesium and sodium that reduces stiffness. Towards the enamel surface, where high hardness is extremely beneficial, these impurities are greatly reduced while mineral density increases, providing teeth with the strength that they need to last.
Fred’s dissertation committee was chaired by Rob Scott (pictured with Fred, above), and included Erin Vogel and Susan Cachel from the Department of Anthropology, along with external committee members Adrian Mann from the Department of Material Science Engineering at Rutgers and Paul Constantino from the Department of Biology at St. Michael’s College. Below is a picture that shows the enamel microstructure in the molar tooth of a common marmoset, one of the many fantastic images that Fred managed to capture. Fred has just accepted a postdoctoral position in the lab of Joan Richtsmeier in the Department of Anthropology at Penn State University, where he will explore the genesis and dysgenesis of Meckel’s cartilage in the developing jaw using mice models. Good luck, Fred!
Michelle Night Pipe
Michelle Night Pipe successfully defended her dissertation, Reducing Anti-Native Bias in South Dakota: Indigenous Acts of Remembrance and Flexible Coalitional Psychology on November 8, 2022. Michelle's dissertation committee was chaired by Lee Cronk (pictured above with Michelle). Description and update to follow.
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Congratulations to two of our CHES grad affiliates who were awarded a Fulbright award! The award will support dissertation fieldwork for Eva Hernandez-Janer in Indonesia and Anissa Speakman in Zambia.
Eva Hernandez-Janer
Eva was awarded the Fulbright IIE Fellowship to support her research in Indonesia from Fall of 2022-2023. Her research, Assessing the Impacts of Ecological Disturbances on Wild Orangutans through Stable Isotopes, investigates the ways in which wild orangutan health is affected by previous peatlands fires and new road construction adjacent to the Tuanan Orangutan Research Station. By measuring stable isotopes on orangutan hair, and urine, as well as on foods the orangutans consume (plants, insects, bark, etc), her research will identify periods of nutritional stress in orangutans at varying distances from these disturbances. Eva’s Fulbright award has provided support and resources for her sample collection in Borneo which is critical to her dissertation research and also provides support for the ongoing collaborations with researchers in Indonesia.
Anissa Speakman
Anissa was awarded the Fulbright U.S. Student Award in 20 to support her research in Zambia: The Effect of Mating Strategy Variation on Reproductive Control in Kinda Baboons (Papio kindae). The award has been integral to her research on the interaction of male and female mating strategies. Using Fulbright funds, she was able to conduct a 6-month pilot study investigating the mating behaviors of Kinda. During that time she worked to refine her research objectives and lay the foundation for her dissertation data collection. Kinda baboons are a little-studied primate species and are remarkably different from other baboon species, especially in relation to mating behavior and opposite-sex relationships.
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Research conducted by Rutgers alumna Renee Boucher for her honors thesis was recently published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Ms. Boucher received financial support for her work from CHES in the form of a Barry C. Lembersky Undergraduate Research Award. Her co-authors include CHES members Hylke N. de Jong and Erin R. Vogel, CHES alumnus Shauhin E. Alavi (now at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Constance, Germany), and Linda V. Godfrey from Rutgers’ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Ms. Boucher is now in the anthropology graduate program at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she is building upon the foundation created by her undergraduate thesis.
Here are the details about this publication:
Boucher, R.D., Alavi, S.E., de Jong, H.N., Godfrey, L.V. and Vogel, E.R., 2021. Stable isotope evidence (Fe, Cu) suggests that sex, but not aging is recorded in rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) bone. American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
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Today, Stephanie Marciniak, presented a fascinating lecture entitled "The Promises and Challenges of Primate Paleogenomics: Insights from the Nuclear Genome of a Large Extinct Lemur Megaladapis edwardsi." Dr. Marciniak, who is a postdoctoral researcher at Penn State University, is using her analyses of DNA and ancient DNA to shed much light on puzzles about the the evolution of primates, such as the gorilla-sized Megaladapis edwardsi lemur, as well as clarify the evolutionary history of human adaptations. Besides this work, Dr. Marciniak has also studied evolutionary aspects of human pathogens, such as the malarial parasite Plasmodium falciparum.
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CHES Graduate Affiliate Elizabeth Ballare passed her doctoral dissertation defense today. Liz’s dissertation “Health Effects of Rehabilitation and Reintroduction on Bornean Orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii)” is based on her two-year fieldwork study in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia at the Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation (BOSF) Nyaru Menteng Rehabilitation Centre and the BOSF Bukit Batikap Reintroduction Forest. Liz also completed laboratory training in the College of Medicine at the University of Florida and one year of laboratory analyses in the Laboratory for Primate Dietary Ecology and Physiology at Rutgers University. Liz’s research was an investigation of the health of orangutan populations in different stages of rehabilitation and reintroduction. Along with a team of assistants and student counterparts, Liz collected urine samples from each population noninvasively and quantified biomarkers of protein balance, energy balance, inflammation, and immune system responsiveness as proxies. She compared these analytes within and amongst each population as well as with data from a wild population, the Tuanan Orangutan Research Project, also in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Liz’s research showed how existing physiological methodologies can be used to assess the health of rehabilitant and reintroduced orangutans and how it can be used to make recommendations in program protocols. Additionally, her research showed how conservation physiology can be used as a tool to objectively measure rehabilitation and reintroduction efforts and create a collaborative community of researchers, conservationists, and governmental and non-governmental organizations. The knowledge gained from her project will provide critical insights into releasing these critically endangered animals and help build a health plan for orangutan rehabilitation and reintroduction that can maximize their survival and fitness in the wild.
Beginning with the photo on the top right and moving counter-clockwise, the members of her committee were Erin Vogel (Dissertation Committee Chair and Director of the Laboratory for Primate Dietary Ecology and Physiology), Henry John-Alder (Professor and Department Chair of the Graduate Program in Ecology and Evolution), Julie Lockwood (Professor and Department Chair of the Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Natural Resources), and Lyle (Linc) Moldawer (outside committee member; Science Research Professor of Surgery, College of Medicine, University of Florida). Liz is highlighted at the bottom in yellow. Congratulations Liz!
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Three CHES Graduate Affiliates in the Anthropology Department did their "Second Year Colloquium" presentations today. This Colloquium allows graduate students in their second year in the PhD program an opportunity to present and discuss with faculty and other students their developing ideas for the doctoral dissertation research focused on some aspect of evolution. This year, three students described their plans in the Zoom meeting, moving from left to right in the photo:
Kyra Johnson: "A Multilvel Approach to the Identification of Burnt Bones in the Archaeological Record"
Andrew Schwartz: "Mammal Dietary Change During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)"
Anissa Speakman: "Cryptic Choice: Female Copulation Calls and Male Ejaculation in Primates"
Congratulations Kyra, Andrew, and Anissa!
