This prize was created in honor of Patricia (Pat) Whitten. Professor Whitten received her PhD from Harvard (1982) and joined the Anthropology faculty at Emory University in 1989. Her doctoral research was on vervet monkeys in Kenya and in later collaboration with Trudy Turner she demonstrated a strong link between ecological factors, social status, and reproductive rates in these primates. At Emory she established an internationally recognized lab for the analysis of steroid levels in fecal samples of wild primates and in 1989 she began collaboration with Diane Brockman (U of North Carolina) on the study of sikfaka lemurs in Madagascar. One of the most significant conclusions of this research was that male sikfakas became stressed during the annual breeding season, but also played a nurturing role with the infants. Throughout her career her interests focused on the links between behavior, biology and reproduction. Professor Whitten died on December 23, 2016.
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