Determinance of abundance and social organization in folivorous primates

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A fundamental issue in ecology is identifying factors influencing animal density, and the importance of this issue has taken on new significance with the need to develop informed management plans for threatened species.  With primates, this issue is critical, because tropical forests are undergoing rapid transformation.  Similarly, a fundamental question in behavioural ecology is understanding how ecological conditions shape the social organizations of animals.  My long-term goal is to work at the interface of behaviour and ecology to develop general principles concerning ecological determinants of (1) abundance and (2) social organization of leaf-eating primates.  I propose two new projects based at my long-term (16+ years) field site in Kibale National Park, Uganda.  (1) First, students, post-docs, and I will test hypotheses of how nutrition and disease can act synergistically to influence animal populations by quantifying connections between attributes of individuals, such as dominance, nutritional stress, and individual parasite burden, and indices of fitness, such as stress (fecal cortisol), re-infection probability, survival, and reproduction.  (2) Second, our long-term research has revealed evidence that suggest that current socioecological models of folivore social organization are making erroneous assumptions; and thus, the models need to be re-evaluated.  We will individually mark a large number of red colobus monkeys to provide the means to appropriately test predictions derived from these models.  This project places a great deal of effort on training both Canadian and Ugandan HQP, in applying results to conservation efforts, and supporting long-term research at a remote field site.