Assistant Professor
College of Letters & Science | Department of Anthropology
Hometown: Kensington, MD
Margaret Bryer is a primatologist who focuses on primate nutrition and social behavior. She explores questions of how social behavior as well as anthropogenic change affect nutritional strategies of wild primates in Uganda and South Africa.
Talks:
Deciphering Diets: The role of social behavior in primate nutritional ecology
How do individuals decide what to eat? As an animal moves through their environment, they must deal with constraints of digestive physiology, availability of multiple nutrients from parcels of food that are usually imbalanced in nutritional composition, competition with and attraction to other members of their social group, and competition with members of other species. Among these interactions, the relationship between sociality and nutrition (“social nutrition”) is an especially rich avenue for testing primate socioecological questions, with implications for evolution of nonhuman primate and human social and feeding behaviors.
How do we work together to reduce human-wildlife conflict?: Data-informed approaches to support baboon management
Using the case study of a collaborative project on reducing human-baboon conflict in a community in South Africa, I discuss in this talk how engagement and project development with multiple local and international stakeholders, and collection of socioecological data, can help reduce human-wildlife conflict.