Group Fission as a Tool to Examine Within-and Between Group Competition in a Leaf-Eating Monkey and Quantify 50+ Years of Changes in a Tropical Forest

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

My long-term goal is to work at the interface of behaviour and ecology to develop general principles concerning ecological determinants of (1) the social organization of leaf-eating monkeys (folivores). I will build upon my 26 years of research on the nutritional requirements, disease, and plant ecology in Kibale National Park, Uganda to take advantage of the fission of my permanent study group into two groups (n=~150 last year, all adults known individually) to address a series of predictions concerning within- and between-group competition in a folivore. To do this I will use a number of advanced approaches such as measuring stress hormones and determining nutrition with near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy. (2) This will also involve continued work at my long-term field site in Kibale National Park, Uganda, where I will quantify changes in forest composition, examine a number of specific predictions involving possible drivers of this change (e.g., succession, climate change, changing elephant numbers), and better understand its influence on primate abundance (at the end of this study, and including Tom Struhsaker's data, I will have 51 years of data). This data set is available to all of my students, from undergrads to post-docs, to write papers from and receive guidance. *** My research will 1) contribute to our fundamental understanding of ecological determinants of folivore abundance and social organizations, 2) provide, what we believe is the longest data set of ecological processes from an African forest, 3) continue to promote strong international exchange and student/post-doc training, 4) provide information that is vitally needed to construct informed conservation strategies, and finally 5) have a strong outreach component, which I have done in the past with interviews with TV stations such as CBC and work with National Geographic. *****