Eva Garrett

Eva Garrett is co-PI of the Sensory Morphology and Genomic Anthropology Lab at Boston University. She has a broad interest in the evolution of sensory systems in primates, particularly the sense of smell and pheromone detection. Her research integrates diverse fields including morphology, genomics, and paleontology to understand how humans and our closest relatives have evolved our unique sensory adaptations. She is working with her current postdoctoral scholar and UROP students to create digital models of extant and fossil primate crania to measure a bony correlate of the vomeronasal organ which provides an estimate of genes related to pheromone detection. Using statistical models, Dr. Garrett and colleagues have demonstrated that contrary to the hypothesis that primates significantly reduced their reliance on smell early in their evolutionary history, only a recent branch of the primate tree (apes and Old World monkeys) have reduced their reliance on pheromone detection in favor of vision.