Shahrina Chowdhury
Ph.D. Candidate, City University of New York, New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology
Shahrina Chowdhury received a BA in Environmental Studies (with a concentration in Ecology and Evolution)
from the University of Chicago in 1998, and an MA in Conservation Biology from the
Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University
in 2004. During her MA program she pursued her interest in primate behavior and
ecology and conducted a thesis project with Marina Cords on the life history of
blue monkeys in Kenya. Upon completion of her Masters, she spent 7 months working
on a field research project with Eduardo Fernandez-Duque on social monogamy in
owl monkeys in Argentina. In 2005 Shahrina entered the
City University of New York (CUNY) PhD program in Biological Anthropology,
specializing in primate social behavior, as part
of the New York Consortium in Evolutionary Primatology (NYCEP)
graduate training program under the supervision of Larissa Swedell.
In July 2006 Shahrina came to Cape Town to assist on projects with the
chacma baboons in Tokai Forest. After finishing her coursework and
qualifying exams in the US, Shahrina returned to Cape Town in August 2009
to start her own Ph.D. project on social behavior and stress in female
chacma baboons in the Tokai population. This project is currently funded
by awards from the US National Science Foundation,
the South African National Research Foundation, and the City University of New York.
Publications and Presentations
Cords, M. and Chowdhury, S. Life history of blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis stuhlmanni) in the Kakamega Forest, Kenya. International Journal of Primatology. Published online DOI: 10.1007/s10764-010-9405-7. URL
Chowdhury, S., Fernandez-Duque, E. and Rudran, R. 2008. Influence of group structure on life histories of female red howler monkeys (Alouatta seniculus) of Venezuela. Primate Eye 96: Abstract # 858.
Steiper, M., Swedell, L., Chowdhury, S., & Garrett, E. 2008. A comparison of inexpensive methods for obtaining DNA from feces in baboons. American Journal of Physical Anthropology Supplement 46: 200.
Chowdhury, S. and Cords, M. 2005. Life history of wild female blue monkeys (Cercopithecus mitis stuhlmanni). Poster presented at 1st international NYCEP conference “Monkeys Old and New” in New York, October 29, 2005.
Chowdhury, S. and Cords, M. 2004. Life history of wild female blue monkeys. Oral presentation for the Congress of the International Primatological Society, Turin, Italy, August 22-28.
