Photo by: Purwo Kuncoro

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06.23.15

Grantee Spotlight: Karline R. L. Janmaat

Grantee Spotlight
Introducing Karline Janmaat from the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology. She was awarded a Leakey Foundation research grant in our spring 2015 cycle for her project entitled “The ecological intelligence of human rainforest foragers.” Karline Janmaat. Photo credit:  Bill Loubelo Many primates have developed mental abilities that help them keep track of when and where… more »
06.21.15

Male rank, not paternity, predicts male–immature relationships in mountain gorillas

Journal Article
Stacy Rosenbaum (University of California at Los Angeles) was awarded a Leakey Foundation research grant in 2010 for her project entitled “Male-immature relationships in the mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei).” Dr. Rosenbaum and her team were recently published in the journal Animal Behaviour, and she was kind enough to provide us with a brief summary of the article. Copyright: … more »
06.19.15

Grantee Spotlight: Gabrielle Russo

Grantee Spotlight
The next spring 2015 Leakey Foundation grantee we would like to introduce you to is Gabrielle Russo from Stony Brook University.  Her project is entitled “Elucidating the evolutionary pathways of hominin basicranial morphology using a formal phylogenetic comparative primate approach.” Gabrielle Russo (R) and collaborator Jeroen B. Smaers The morphology of the basicranium (base… more »
06.17.15

Journal Article: There Is More than One Way to Crack an Oyster: Identifying Variation in Burmese Long-Tailed Macaque (Macaca fascicularis aurea) Stone-Tool Use

Journal Article
Amanda Tan is a PhD candidate at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. She was awarded a Leakey Foundation research grant in the spring of 2013. Here is a summary of her team’s recent paper in PLOS ONE. Researchers Catalog Variation in Stone-Tool Use by Burmese Long-Tailed Macaques Burmese long-tailed macaques living on islands in southern Thailand use 17 different action patterns… more »
06.12.15

Chimpanzee ‘Laugh Faces’

Journal Article
Marina Davila-Ross was awarded a grant from The Leakey Foundation in the spring of 2015 for her research project entitled “Systematically testing facial thermal imaging as a most sensitive and reliable novel technology to directly compare subtle emotion changes in apes and humans.” Her work on facial expressions and laughter in chimpanzees was recently published in the journal PLOS ONE.… more »
06.09.15

From the Field: Benjamin Collins, Grassridge Rockshelter, South Africa

From the Field
Season two field crew (l-r): Cherene De Bruyn, Lisa Rogers, Dr. Christopher Ames, Dr. Benjamin Collins. Photo credit:  Dr. Benjamin Collins. Dr. Benjamin Collins and Dr. Christopher Ames recently concluded a second season of Leakey Foundation-funded excavations at Grassridge rockshelter. The shelter is located at the base of the Stormberg Mountains in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, approximately… more »
06.02.15

Presenting Our Spring 2015 Grantees

Grants
On April 25th The Leakey Foundation’s Board of Trustees convened for our Spring Granting Session. The Board unanimously approved the twenty-two research grants our Scientific Executive Committee presented as recommended for funding. Here are a few numbers from our Spring 2015 Granting Cycle: There were 101 research grant applications: 37% were categorized as behavioral, 63% were paleoanthropology. … more »