CHES Graduate Affiliate
- Will Aguado
- Advisor: Dr. Erin Vogel
- Focus Area: Non-Human Primates
- Email:
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - ACADEMIC BIOGRAPHY:
I graduated cum laude from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2013 with a B.A. in Anthropology, and I received my M.A. in anthropology from Iowa State University in 2018. I joined the PhD program at Rutgers in the Fall of 2018.
- CURRENT PROJECTS:
I study primate dietary ecology and evolution using field, lab and computational genetics methods. One of my main interests is understanding how tropical forest dynamics and phytochemistry constrain diets and shape evolutionary responses. My dissertation pairs ecological fieldwork in Indonesian Borneo with laboratory analyses of rainforest plants to understand how orangutan feeding behavior and nutrient intake varies with seasonal ecological changes. In parallel to my work on wild orangutans, I study the genetics of salivary proteins as a window into primate dietary adaptation.
- RESEARCH INTERESTS:
primate evolutionary ecology, evolutionary genomics, tropical ecology