Erin Vogel and Lab Group Publish Article on Orangutans and Muscle Catabolism during Fruit Scarcity
Rutgers Anthropology Associate Professor and Grad Program Director Erin Vogel and her lab group published a new article in @SciReports showing orangutans experience muscle catabolism during episodes of fruit scarcity. The article was lead by Dr. Caitlin O’Connell, a research associate and postdoc in the Vogel Lab. They estimated lean body mass and found that muscle mass was significantly lower when less fruit was available for all age-sex classes. This was pretty remarkable because orangutans are thought to be especially good at storing and using fat for energy. In humans, burning through muscle happens after body fat stores are significantly depleted, characterizing the final stage of starvation. So it was surprising that an ape that is well-adapted to withstand fruit shortage was resorting to catabolizing functional body tissue. The research team already knew fruit was important for critically endangered orangutans, and these findings highlight the need to consider fruit availability in forest corridors and areas being considered for rehabilitant release or translocation.
The research team studied orangutans at the Rutgers co-directed Tuanan Biological Research Station over a 6 year period and consists of Rutgers doctoral student Rebecca Brittain, two former Anthropology undergraduate students (Alexa Ugarte and Daniel Naumenko), two postdoctoral researchers working with Vogel in her lab (Dr. Caitlin O’Connell and Dr. Andrea DiGiorgio) and Vogel’s long-term collaborator and partner in Tuanan, Dr. Sri Suci Utami Atmoko. You can find more information here: https://www.rutgers.edu/news/orangutan-finding-highlights-need-protect-habitat and read the article here https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-89186-4
On November 5, 2020, Prof. Omar Dewachi and graduate student Joyce Lu led a panel on challenges to grad student research and education during COVID19. Hosted by the Society & Pandemic Working Group, this interdisciplinary panel brought together speakers from multiple departments and campuses across Rutgers, featuring doctoral candidates Alexandra Adams, Biological Sciences-Newark; Gabrielle Cabrera, Anthropology-New Brunswick; Dilara Demir, Sociology-New Brunswick; and Lisette Varón-Carvajal, History-New Brunswick. Topics discussed included COVID19-related restrictions on travel and access to research materials, IRB modifications and "COVID contingency plans," precarities in funding, as well challenges unique to international students. - Joyce Lu, CITE doctoral student
Dr. Erin Vogel (PI) and her colleagues (Dr. Victoria Ramenzoni (Rutgers, Human Ecology and Graduate Program in Anthropology), Dr. Suci Utami Atmoko (Universitas Nasional, Indonesia), and Daniel Naumenko (former Rutgers undergrad and doctoral student at UC Boulder) have been awarded a Global Environmental Change Grant titled “Building On-the-Ground Conservation Infrastructure for Long-Term Monitoring of Anthropogenic Air Pollution and Its Impact on Forest Dynamics and Wild Bornean Orangutans”. The Global Environmental Change Grant is offered in partnership between Rutgers Global, the Rutgers Institute of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, and the Rutgers Climate Institute. Vogel and her collaborators propose to initiate a study to monitor peatland carbon emissions and document the impacts of smoke on the health of wild Bornean orangutans and the environment in which they live. Combining local air quality monitoring with on-going assessment of forest phenology and orangutan health will allow detection of the impact of human-induced smoke and climatic variation on local plant and wildlife populations.
Omar Dewachi was presented with the prestigious New Millennium Book Award for his book, Ungovernable Life: Mandatory Medicine and Statecraft in Iraq (SUP 2017). This award, sponsored by the Society for Medical Anthropology, is given biannually to "the author whose work is judged to be the most significant and potentially influential contribution to medical anthropology. Books of exceptional courage and potential impact beyond the field will be given special consideration.”
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