During spring term 2014, HEB graduate student Andrew Cunningham was awarded a Leakey Foundation grant for $10,800 to investigate the foraging profitability of aquatic habitats and adjacent drier ones for female foragers in the Okavango region of Northwest Botswana.
Andrew is currently collecting focal behavioral data, plant samples for nutritional analyses, heart rate and VO2 data, GPS data, and weather data. This grant, in combination with the additional funding, will allow Andrew to create his very own field site. The new field site is a project that he hopes to continue beyond his Ph.D. dissertation research and one that may eventually be available to other researchers conducting work on topics related to diet, energetics, nutrition, health, and subsistence transitions.