Rafael Mares
Post-Doc Researcher
Rafael Mares studied Biology at the University of Panama and went on to work for WWF on a conservation project in the Peruvian Amazon, investigating the ecology of white-lipped peccaries. In 2007, He joined the Kalahari Meerkat Project in South Africa, which led to a PhD at the University of Cambridge (awarded in 2012). His doctoral research focused on extraterritorial prospecting and cooperative territory defence in meerkats, and was supervised by Tim Clutton-Brock and Andy Young (University of Exeter).
He is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at CIBIO-InBIO, and he is investigating the social and environmental factors that shape decisions to invest in reproductive and helping behaviours in sociable weavers (Philetairus socius), as well as the fitness consequences of these decisions.