Grace Davis  - PhD student at UC Davis

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• Planning an overseas lab visit

I am fascinated by the interactions between animals and their environments. In particular, I am intrigued by primates, which provide a unique window into the evolutionary mechanisms that shape human sociality. My interest in the natural world began at an early age when I spent an inordinate amount of time exploring the mountains behind my home, identifying plants, writing detailed behavioral notes on birds, and collecting insects. I still have a collection of old mud-splattered field notebooks from when I was in elementary school with exhaustive observations of duck behavior in the ponds behind my house (drawings included). I even did my 8th grade science fair project on gorilla social behavior at the local zoo. My pursuit of science motivated me to seek answers for all kinds of questions, and while in college, I participated in research spanning a wide spectrum of fields including field and wildlife biology, genetics, neuroscience, electrical engineering, virology, behavioral ecology, and anthropology. Eventually, I settled on investigating the social lives of group-living animals, and I spent several months studying wild mountain gorillas in Rwanda, and chacma baboons in South Africa. I am currently pursuing an evolutionary anthropology PhD at the University of California, Davis under Dr. Meg Crofoot, with the aspiration of becoming a primatologist and PI at the university level.

​My dissertation research investigates how ecological resources, competition, and social relationships shape collective decision-making in wild primates. Discovering an excitement for collective foraging behavior, my graduate work investigates how interactions between individuals create group-level dynamics. I am intrigued by questions such as: how do individuals in social primate groups decide where to go and what to eat? How do group members coordinate their activities? How does leadership evolve in complex societies? I test these questions in the tropical forests of Barro Colorado Island, Panama, where I work as a fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), studying groups of white-faced capuchins and spider monkeys.