Sofia Mafalda Pereira
Research Interests
Behavioral endocrinology
Non-human primate behavioral ecology
Evolution of social behavior
How do non-human primates use the available social information to navigate their social environment?
My work on selective social attention in wild Assamese Macaques focuses on one of the pivotal processes underlying the social dynamics of social primates: how social information is acquired and used to navigate the social environment. This project is part of the SFB1528: Cognition of Interaction.
Education
- Mar 22 – Present: PhD Student
Department for Behavioral Ecology, University of Göttingen, Germany
BeCoG PhD Program: Behavior and Cognition
Research group SFB1528: Cognition of Interaction
Project: Acquisition and use of social information in wild Assamese macaques
- Nov 20 – Feb 22: Field Site Manager
UCLA’S Lomas Barbudal field site, Guanacaste, Costa Rica
Long-term behavioral study of wild white-faced capuchins
- Aug 18 – Jun 20: MSc Applied Ethology and Animal Biology
Biology department, Linköping University, Sweden
MSc thesis in cooperation with Universidad Veracruzana, Veracruz, Mexico
Final thesis on the adaptive function of taste in black-handed Spider monkeys
- Sep 14 – Jul 17: BSc Biology
University of Lisbon, Portugal
Final dissertation on the Gene expression of coffee pathogen C. cahawae
Publications
- Vogg R, Nuske M, Weis M, Lüddecke T, Karakoç E, Ahmed Y, Pereira S, Malaivijitnond, Meesawat S, Wörgötter, Kappeler P, Gail A, Ostner J, Schülke O, Fichtel C & Ecker A (2024) PriMAT: A robust multi-animal tracking model for primates in the wild. bioRXiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.08.21.607881
- Pereira, S., Henderson, D., Hjelm, M., Hård, T., Salazar, L. T. H., & Laska, M. 2021. Taste responsiveness of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and black-handed spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) to eight substances tasting sweet to humans. , Physiology & Behavior, 238: 113470.
- Pereira, S., Salazar, L. T. H., & Laska, M. 2021. Taste-induced facial responses in black-handed spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi). , Behavioural Processes, 188: 104417.
- Pereira, S., Salazar, L. T. H., & Laska, M. 2020. Taste detection threshold of human (Homo sapiens) subjects and taste preference threshold of black-handed spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) for the sugar substitute isomalt. , Primates, 62: 389-394.