Duke UniversityEvolutionary Anthropology

Research Description

My interest in research and primates began while I was in the U.S. Air Force. I spent four years working with monkeys in the NASA space program. I was a trained surgical technician before I went into the Air Force and received additional training as a veterinary technician in the Air Force. This work, training, and experience made me realize that I wanted to do research that would benefit the primates. I began attending night classes while still in the Air Force and obtained my undergraduate degree at the University of Texas, Austin, after being released from the Air Force. I started my undergraduate career with a major in Zoology but switched to Anthropology because that is the discipline where primate research was being done. After finishing at Austin, I completed my doctorate in six years at the University of Chicago. My wife and I lived for 1 1/2 of those six years in Costa Rica. We spent an average of 12 and 1/2 hours per day following the monkeys and recording what they did.

Research Interests and Objectives

My research has focused on studying plant-primate interactions. Currently I am directing a long-term field project (begun in 1970 and currently continuing) investigating the interaction between plant-produced chemicals and primate feeding behavior as well as the impact this has on primate social organizations. My research objectives have expanded to include: evaluating the plant-primate interaction from an ethnobotanical perspective; the evolutionary development of optimal group size and composition; the relationship between food quality and quantity and body size; the factors affecting short and long-term demographic changes in established groups; and the role of regenerating forests on primate density. I continue to collect data on a population of 75-100 individually marked mantled howling monkeys (Alouatta palliata) living in dry forests in northwestern Costa Rica. (Please see Enter link text here Map of La Pacifica with Location of Howler Groups.) In addition to Costa Rica, I have traveled to and done research in Belize, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Madagascar, Mexico, Panama, Peru, Trinidad, Venezuela, Vietnam, Uganda, and Zanzibar.

Conservation Work

The Duke University Lemur Center houses the world's largest collection of endangered primates, the lemurs of Madagascar. As a former Director of the Center, I am still involved in behavioral and physiological research concerned with their conservation biology.

I have visited Madagascar 18 times since my first visit in 1982. My research with lemurs has concentrated on their interactions with plants, i.e., how do plant chemicals affect lemur-feeding behavior. In 1987 this work lead to the discovery that one of the bamboo lemurs consumes four times the lethal dose of cyanide every day with its daily diet of bamboo. I am also collecting data on what North Carolina plants our free-ranging lemurs eat from our 65 acres of Natural Habitat Enclosures.

On an expedition to Madagascar in 1999, I discovered a population of unknown and undiscribed lemurs in the Tsinjoarivo region. I returned to the area in 2002 and 2003 to help Mitch Irwin with his long-term study of their biology and ecology.

In 1992, 1993 and 1994 I was involved with the NYZS/WCS project that translocated black howling monkeys from the Baboon Sanctuary to Cockscomb Basin in Belize. Howlers have been locally extinct in Cockscomb since 1978. We moved 65 individuals. The translocated animals were monitored with radio transmitters. This project demonstrates that monkeys can be translocated successfully if moved in intact social groups. Translocation is going to be a required tool in the future management of wild primate populations.

I was also involved in a preliminary effort to manage the remaining wild population of woolly spider monkeys (Brachyteles arachnoides) in Brazil. This involved capturing animals for genetic studies to determine how inbred the isolated populations were and to what degree we needed to move individuals between these isolated populations. As a result of this work muriquis have been split into two species.

In July of 2000, I participated in the translocation of Alouatta palliata from a threatened habitat to the Maquipucuna Reserve in Ecuador. Howlers had been eliminated from this area before it was protected. The animals that were moved have been part of a long-term study by Ecuadorian scientist to determine whether the reserve is a viable environment for howlers and to provide an attraction to eco-tourists.

In July of 2001, I participated in the rescue and translocation of Alouatta seniculus from small islands in Guri Lake to the mainland in Venezuela. These islands were formed in 1986 when the Venezuelan government completed construction on the world's second largest hydroelectric facility along the Rio Caroni in the state of Bolivar. The inundation of over 4300 square kilometers of hilly terrain resulted in the formation of Lake Guri and the fragmentation of contiguous forest into hundreds of isolated islands ranging in size from 0.1 to 1000 hectares that are located a maximum of 6 km from the mainland. During the initial inundation, the monkeys were trapped on several of the newly formed islands.

In June of 2005 I traveled to Vietnam on the invitation of several Vietnamese scientists to collaborate on the the translocation of (Trachypithecus delacouri) and (Trachypithecus poliocephalus).