Margaret Corley, Ph.D.
Broadly, I am interested in social behavior and how it influences, and is influenced by, patterns of dispersal and relatedness. After studying ecology and falling in love with fieldwork as an undergraduate at Boston University, I received an MS from Queens College CUNY, where I studied variation in mating strategies and colony relatedness in ants (Lasius niger). I then received my PhD in Biological Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania. My doctoral dissertation research focused on examining behavioral and endocrine correlates of dispersal in a pair-living primate, the owl monkey (Aotus azarae). I continued investigating this topic when I joined Yale’s Anthropology Department as a Postdoctoral Associate, by examining how dispersal behavior relates to patterns of genetic relatedness and gene flow in wild owl monkeys in Argentina. As a postdoc in the Caccone lab, I am currently working on the Aedes albopictus mosquito project, which seeks to quantify genetically-based geographic variation for diapause, an important life-history trait that contributes to range expansion of this invasive species.