The KLI
Entry 189 of 488

News Details

Mariana Dutra Fogaca
2020-10-15
Behavior: The Missing Link to Understanding Diet and Morphology

Zoom link for registration: 

Deadline for the registration with Zoom is 12.30 pm on the day of the talk.
Please take note that nobody will be admitted in the room after 3:05 pm.

Topic description / abstract:

Besides intense efforts to understand the relation between diet and morphology in primates, we still cannot extend the findings across different groups. That may occur due to the insufficiency in communication between scientific areas. From an evolutionary perspective, behavior may also play a role in the pattern between morphology and diet. After all, the diet's composition is not only determined by the species and varies on the season, year, and social status. On top of that, several species present complex socially transmitted behaviors to access food, including anvil and stone tools. So how can the confluence of etology and morphological studies expand our understanding of the morphology evolution?

 

Biographical note:

Mariana Dutra Fogaça is a primatologist and a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. She focuses on the feeding behavior of wild animals, with experience with Neotropical Monkeys and Strepsirrhinesi. She aims to understand how behavior plays a role in the morphological evolution of the masticatory anatomy, allowing a broader view of feeding evolution.

She works towards the conservation by incorporating her founds into agroforestry systems with the community surrounding the forests. And as a science communicator in Brazilian science media.