Alex Piel & Fiona Stewart

Alex: I am a PhD candidate at the University of California, San Diego and visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge, UK. I have studied wild primates since an undergraduate, having worked in west (Senegal) and East (Madagascar, Kenya, Tanzania) Africa. My focus now is on endangered chimpanzees living in a marginal habitat in western Tanzania. These apes are interesting from both an anthropological as well as conservation perspective. They live in similar conditions to the earliest human ancestors, and so offer a window into the origins of the human species. This environment may demand an entirely different type of social organisation not before observed in chimpanzees. Since 2005 I have co-directed the Ugalla Primate Project which seeks to answer these questions of behavioral adaptation, as well as help protect Tanzania's remaining chimpanzee population. _____________________________________________________________ Fiona: I am currently the Wheldale Onslow Research Fellow at Newnham College, University of Cambridge, where my primary research interests surround the behavioural ecology and conservation of savanna chimpanzees. My first degree is in Zoology from the University of Glasgow, where I developed initial interests in tropical biology, studying wild hummingbirds in Ecuador and dry habitat chimpanzees in Senegal. After completing my PhD in 2011 I conducted a land-scape scale survey of western Tanzania's chimpanzee populations, using genetic census techniques on non-invasively collected faecal samples, to prioritise areas for conservation and investigate gene flow and population connectivity. Since 2005 I have conducted research in Tanzania where I co-direct the Ugalla Primate Project. We are interested in the behavioural flexibility of chimpanzees, in particular, how savanna-woodland dwelling chimpanzees have adapted to such a dry environment.

November 2013