Margaret Crofoot

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Margaret "Meg" Chatham Crofoot
Alma mater Stanford University
Harvard University
Scientific career
Institutions University of California, Davis
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Princeton University
Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
University of Konstanz
Thesis Intergroup competition in white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus) : automated radio-telemetry reveals how intergroup relationships shape space-use and foraging success  (2008)

Margaret Chatham Crofoot (born 1980) [1] is an American anthropologist who is a professor at the University of Konstanz and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. Her research considers the behavior and decision making of primates. She was appointed an Alexander von Humboldt Professor in 2019.

Contents

Early life and education

Crofoot was born in Belfast, Maine. [1] She was an undergraduate student at Stanford University where she worked alongside Robert Sapolsky and Nancy Czekala, investigating the Buceros bicornis (the great hornbill). [2] She moved to Harvard University as a graduate student. Her doctoral research considered competition amongst white faced capuchin monkey. [3]

In 2008, Crofoot joined Princeton University as a lecturer in evolutionary biology. She worked simultaneously as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. At the time she served as Director of Automated Radio Telemetry System Initiative.[ citation needed ]

Research and career

Crofoot was made a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in 2010.[ citation needed ] She moved to the University of California, Davis in 2013, where she joined the faculty in the Department of Anthropology. She investigated primates: from the behavior of baboons to the competition of capuchins. She was particularly interested in decision-making amongst monkeys, including how baboons make decisions [4] and how capuchins cooperate. [5] To monitor the behavior of primate troops, Crofoot makes use of GPS tracking units. By attaching accelerometers to the baboons, Crofoot conducted the first detailed study of the movement and associated energetic costs of a group of wild primates. [6] She combined experimental observations to computational predictions of how the groups would look if the baboons all moved at their own pace. [6] She reported that all baboons compromise their preferred speed to keep their groups together, with the smallest baboons consuming the most energy to do so. She showed that larger male baboons with long legs move with longer strides than juveniles.[ citation needed ]

Crofoot joined the University of Konstanz and the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in 2019. [1] She was made a Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellow [7] and serves as Director of the Department for the Ecology of Animal Societies. [1]

In 2021, Crofoot and fifteen other women scientists told the stories of sexual harassment they endured during their research experiences at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. [8] She first visited the Institute during her graduate studies, but it was during her postdoctoral fellowship that Egbert Leigh confessed to being “madly in love” with her. [8] Crofoot made a formal complaint to the Director (Eldredge Bermingham), who imposed restrictions upon Leigh, but they were barely enforced when Bermingham left a few years later. [8]

Awards and honors

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cebidae</span> Family of New World monkeys

The Cebidae are one of the five families of New World monkeys now recognised. Extant members are the capuchin and squirrel monkeys. These species are found throughout tropical and subtropical South and Central America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Primate</span> Order of mammals

Primates are a diverse order of mammals. They are divided into the strepsirrhines, which include the lemurs, galagos, and lorisids, and the haplorhines, which include the tarsiers and the simians. Primates arose 85–55 million years ago first from small terrestrial mammals, which adapted to living in the trees of tropical forests: many primate characteristics represent adaptations to life in this challenging environment, including large brains, visual acuity, color vision, a shoulder girdle allowing a large degree of movement in the shoulder joint, and dextrous hands. Primates range in size from Madame Berthe's mouse lemur, which weighs 30 g (1 oz), to the eastern gorilla, weighing over 200 kg (440 lb). There are 376–524 species of living primates, depending on which classification is used. New primate species continue to be discovered: over 25 species were described in the 2000s, 36 in the 2010s, and three in the 2020s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Primatology</span> Scientific study of primates

Primatology is the scientific study of primates. It is a diverse discipline at the boundary between mammalogy and anthropology, and researchers can be found in academic departments of anatomy, anthropology, biology, medicine, psychology, veterinary sciences and zoology, as well as in animal sanctuaries, biomedical research facilities, museums and zoos. Primatologists study both living and extinct primates in their natural habitats and in laboratories by conducting field studies and experiments in order to understand aspects of their evolution and behavior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frans de Waal</span> Dutch primatologist and ethologist

Franciscus Bernardus Maria "Frans" de Waal is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory, and author of numerous books including Chimpanzee Politics (1982) and Our Inner Ape (2005). His research centers on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequity aversion, and food-sharing. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Panamanian white-faced capuchin</span> Species of primate

The Panamanian white-faced capuchin, also known as the Panamanian white-headed capuchin or Central American white-faced capuchin, is a medium-sized New World monkey of the family Cebidae, subfamily Cebinae. Native to the forests of Central America, the white-faced capuchin is important to rainforest ecology for its role in dispersing seeds and pollen.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olive baboon</span> Also called the Anubis baboon, is a member of the family Cercopithecidae (Old World monkeys)

The olive baboon, also called the Anubis baboon, is a member of the family Cercopithecidae Old World monkeys. The species is the most wide-ranging of all baboons, being native to 25 countries throughout Africa, extending from Mali eastward to Ethiopia and Tanzania. Isolated populations are also present in some mountainous regions of the Sahara. It inhabits savannahs, steppes, and forests. The common name is derived from its coat colour, which is a shade of green-grey at a distance. A variety of communications, vocal and non-vocal, facilitate a complex social structure.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Capuchin monkey</span> Subfamily of New World monkeys

The capuchin monkeys are New World monkeys of the subfamily Cebinae. They are readily identified as the "organ grinder" monkey, and have been used in many movies and television shows. The range of capuchin monkeys includes some tropical forests in Central America and South America as far south as northern Argentina. In Central America, where they are called white-faced monkeys ("carablanca"), they usually occupy the wet lowland forests on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica and Panama and deciduous dry forest on the Pacific coast.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tufted capuchin</span> Species of New World monkey

The tufted capuchin, also known as brown capuchin, black-capped capuchin, or pin monkey is a New World primate from South America and the Caribbean islands of Trinidad and Margarita. As traditionally defined, it is one of the most widespread primates in the Neotropics, but it has recently been recommended considering the black-striped, black and golden-bellied capuchins as separate species in a new genus, thereby effectively limiting the tufted capuchin to the Amazon basin and nearby regions. However, the large-headed capuchin, previously defined as a distinct species, has been reclassified as a subspecies of the tufted capuchin, expanding its range east to Peru & Ecuador and south to Bolivia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">White-fronted capuchin</span> Common name for several monkey species

White-fronted capuchin can refer to any of a number of species of gracile capuchin monkey which used to be considered as the single species Cebus albifrons. White-fronted capuchins are found in seven different countries in South America: Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Trinidad and Tobago.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wedge-capped capuchin</span> Species of New World monkey

The wedge-capped capuchin or Guianan weeper capuchin is a capuchin monkey from South America. It is found in northern Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela. Cebus olivaceus is known to dwell in tall, primary forest and travel over long distances during the day.

Barbara Boardman Smuts is an American anthropologist and psychologist noted for her research into baboons, dolphins, and chimpanzees, and a Professor Emeritus at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">La Suerte Biological Field School</span>

La Suerte Biological Field School, located in Northeastern Costa Rica, is one of two field schools operated by the Maderas rainforest conservancy. The site is situated in a tropical rainforest basin. It houses courses in primatology, ecology, botany, and other courses related to the flora and fauna of Northeastern Costa Rica. This lowland Neotropical region remains one of the most biologically diverse in the world. The field station encompasses 700 acres (2.8 km2) containing a wealth of habitats including primary and secondary forests, swamps, marshes and pasture. In addition, much of the property lies along the Rio La Suerte, a flowing river that empties into the Caribbean at Tortuguero National Park.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gracile capuchin monkey</span> Genus of mammals belonging to the capuchin and squirrel monkey family of primates

Gracile capuchin monkeys are capuchin monkeys in the genus Cebus. At one time all capuchin monkeys were included within the genus Cebus. In 2011, Jessica Lynch Alfaro et al. proposed splitting the genus between the robust capuchin monkeys, such as the tufted capuchin, and the gracile capuchins. The gracile capuchins retain the genus name Cebus, while the robust species have been transferred to Sapajus.

Jeanne Altmann, born March 18, 1940 in New York City, is a professor emerita and Eugene Higgins Professor of ecology and evolutionary biology currently at Princeton University. She is known for her research on the social behaviour of baboons and her contributions to contemporary primate behavioural ecology. She is a founder and co-director of the Amboseli Baboon Research Project. Her paper in 1974 on the observational study of behaviour is a cornerstone for ecologists and has been cited more than 10,000 times. She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, and a member of the American Philosophical Society (2020)

Susan C. Alberts is an American primatologist, anthropologist, and biologist who is the current Chair of the Department of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University; previously, she served as a Bass fellow and the Robert F. Durden Professor of Biology at Duke. She currently co-directs the Amboseli Baboon Research Project with Jeanne Altmann of Princeton University. Her research broadly studies how animal behavior evolved in mammals, with a specific focus on the social behavior, demography, and genetics of the yellow baboon, although some of her work has included the African elephant. She was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2014, won the Cozzarelli Prize of the National Academy of Sciences in 2016, and was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.

Dorothy Leavitt Cheney was an American scientist who studied the social behavior, communication, and cognition of wild primates in their natural habitat. She was Professor of Biology at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of both the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Robert M. Seyfarth is an American primatologist and author. With his wife and collaborator Dorothy L. Cheney, he spent years studying the social behavior, communication, and cognition of wild primates in their natural habitat, including more than a decade of field work with baboons in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. Seyfarth, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania until his retirement, is a member of both the United States National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colombian white-faced capuchin</span> Species of New World monkey

The Colombian white-faced capuchin, also known as the Colombian white-headed capuchin or Colombian white-throated capuchin, is a medium-sized New World monkey of the family Cebidae, subfamily Cebinae. It is native to the extreme eastern portion of Panama and the extreme north-western portion of South America in western Colombia and northwestern Ecuador.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Humboldt's white-fronted capuchin</span> Species of New World monkey

Humboldt's white-fronted capuchin is a species of gracile capuchin monkey. It is found in Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, and potentially the island of Trinidad.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Prof. Dr. Meg Crofoot | Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior". www.ab.mpg.de. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
  2. Crofoot, M.; Mace, M.; Azua, J.; MacDonald, E.; Czekala, N.M. (2003). "Reproductive assessment of the great hornbill (Buceros bicornis) by fecal hormone analysis". Zoo Biology. 22 (2): 135–145. doi:10.1002/zoo.10083. ISSN   0733-3188.
  3. Crofoot, Margaret Chatham (2008). Intergroup competition in white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus): automated radio-telemetry reveals how intergroup relationships shape space-use and foraging success (Thesis). OCLC   275989291.
  4. "Collective Baboon Behavior". Crofoot Lab. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
  5. "Capuchin Cooperation & Intergroup Conflict". Crofoot Lab. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
  6. 1 2 "For animal societies, cohesion comes at a cost". ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
  7. Foundation, Alexander von Humboldt. "The might of the majority". humboldt-foundation.pageflow.io. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
  8. 1 2 3 "Women Scientists Described A Culture Of Sexual Misconduct At The Smithsonian's Tropical Research Institute". BuzzFeed News. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
  9. "Crofoot, Margaret C." The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
  10. "Margaret C. Crofoot". www.humboldt-foundation.de (in German). Retrieved December 10, 2021.