Colin Austin Chapman

George Washington University | GW · Center for the Advanced Study of Hominid Paleobiology

How Primate Foraging Strategies Modulate Responses to Anthropogenic Change and Thus Primate Conservation.

Establishing protected areas is a key element of most conservation strategies, but continuous effective management is needed to ensure that biodiversity is protected. Here we provide an evaluation of park effectiveness by quantifying changes in the abundance of the commonly occurring ungulates (bushbuck-Tragelaphus scriptus; red duiker-Cephalophus...

Conservation funding is currently limited; cost-effective conservation solutions are essential. We suggest that the thousands of field stations worldwide can play key roles at the frontline of biodiversity conservation and have high intrinsic value. We assessed field stations’ conservation return on investment and explored the impact of COVID-19. W...

This book brings a unique perspective to animal movement studies because all studies that come from African tropical environments describe the great diversity, either biological and structurally (trees, shrubs, vines, epiphytes) and present the animals with several options to fulfil their basic needs. These conditions have forced the evolution of u...

In Chapter 1 we summarize the state of the knowledge of movement ecology for Afrotropical forest mammals and we suggest new directions to design studies on movement ecology for mammals living inside the African tropical forests.

World‐wide declines in arthropod abundance and diversity are a major concern, particularly given their importance in ecosystem functioning. Yet, data documenting long‐term trends are rare from the tropics, particularly the Afrotropics. Here we evaluate changes in the arthropod communities in Kibale National Park, Uganda across almost four decades....

Building conservation research capacity (CRC), especially in developing countries, has long been proposed to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. Yet, a global evaluation of CRC and its impact on biodiversity conservation is still lacking. Here, by analyzing over 177,000 scientific papers frommajor conservation journals published after 2000, we deri...

Flies form high-density associations with human settlements and groups of nonhuman primates and are implicated in transmitting pathogens. We investigate the movement of nonhuman primate-associated flies across landscapes surrounding Kibale National Park, Uganda, using a mark-recapture experiment. Flies were marked in nine nonhuman primate groups at...

Aim Biodiversity hotspots often span international borders, thus conservation efforts must as well. China is one of the most biodiverse countries and the length of its international land borders is the longest in the world; thus, there is a strong need for transboundary conservation. We identify China's transboundary conservation hotspots and analy...

Frugivory in tropical forests is a major ecological process as most tree species rely on frugivores to disperse their seeds. However, the underlying mechanisms driving frugivore–plant networks remain understudied. Here, we evaluate the data available on the Afrotropical frugivory network to identify structural properties, as well as assess knowledg...

In Africa, most protected forests are in densely human‐dominated landscapes where human–wildlife conflict is intense. We documented farmer perceptions and responses to crop‐raiding wildlife from Kibale National Park, Uganda. Crop raiding was mostly (95%) by baboons ( Papio anubis ) and elephants ( Loxodonta africana ). While the financial loss caus...

Among mammals, the order Primates is exceptional in having a high taxonomic richness in which the taxa are arboreal, semiterrestrial, or terrestrial. Although habitual terrestrial-ity is pervasive among the apes and African and Asian monkeys (catarrhines), it is largely absent among monkeys of the Americas (platyrrhines), as well as galagos, lemurs...

Among mammals, the order Primates is exceptional in having a high taxonomic richness in which the taxa are arboreal, semiterrestrial, or terrestrial. Although habitual terrestriality is pervasive among the apes and African and Asian monkeys (catarrhines), it is largely absent among monkeys of the Americas (platyrrhines), as well as galagos, lemurs,...

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) harbor rich assemblages of malaria parasites, including three species closely related to P. falciparum (sub-genus Laverania), the most malignant human malaria parasite. Here, we characterize the ecology and epidemiology of malaria infection in wild chimpanzee reservoirs. We used molecular assays to screen chimpanzee fe...

Dispersal between social groups reduces the risk of inbreeding and can improve individuals' reproductive opportunities. However, this movement has costs, such as increased risk of predation and starvation, loss of allies and kin support, and increased aggression associated with entering the new group. Dispersal strategies, such as the timing of mov...

Many of the world’s most biodiverse regions are found in the poorest and second most populous continent of Africa; a continent facing exceptional challenges. Africa is projected to quadruple its population by 2100 and experience increasingly severe climate change and environmental conflict—all of which will ravage biodiversity. Here we assess conse...

Finding suitable sleeping sites is highly advantageous but challenging for wild animals. While suitable sleeping sites provide protection against predators and enhance sleep quality, these sites are heterogeneously distributed in space. Thus, animals may generate memories associated with suitable sleeping sites to be able to approach them efficient...

Resource availability is intricately linked to female reproductive success, and poor timing of reproduction can negatively impact maternal and/or infant survival. Thus, females should exhibit flexibility in the timing of reproduction that reflects local conditions. We examined eight years of data on births, conceptions, mating seasonality, and inte...

With the ongoing global biodiversity crisis in the Anthropocene, it is critical to understand how to save endangered species to “bend the curve” of biodiversity decline. The Hainan gibbon ( Nomascus hainanus ) is a Critically Endangered species that is endemic to Hainan Island. We performed two synchronized total count surveys in Hainan Tropic Rain...

The degree to which variation in adult food availability affects the population dynamics of a species depends on its position on the capital‐income breeding continuum. The long‐lived butterflies that feed on fruits as adults constitute an example of Lepidoptera with a high degree of income breeding. For three species of fruit‐feeding butterflies in...

Flies are implicated in carrying and mechanically transmitting many primate pathogens. We investigated how fly associations vary across six monkey species (Cercopithecus ascanius, Cercopithecus mitis, Colobus guereza, Lophocebus albigena, Papio anubis, and Piliocolobus tephrosceles) and whether monkey group size impacts fly densities. Fly densities...

Adult males living in a one-male multi-female social group are expected to try to monopolize copulations with resident females to increase reproductive fitness. Gibbons have traditionally been described as living in monogamous groups, with the sole resident adult male assumed to sire all of the group's offspring. Here, we used microsatellite analys...

Sixty years ago, Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring, which focused the world's attention on the dangers of pesticides. Since that time human impacts on the environment have accelerated and this has included reshaping the chemical landscape. Here we evaluate the severity of exposure of tropical terrestrial mammals to pesticides, pharmace...

As deforestation progresses in the tropics, wildlife populations are increasingly restricted to forest fragments. Here we study genetic population structure in the endangered Ashy red colobus (Piliocolobus tephrosceles) population in the forest fragments surrounding Kibale National Park, Uganda. Subsequently, we use landscape features (elevation, r...

Leucism is an aberration of color that occurs in individuals as a consequence of genetic mutations. Along with albinism and piebaldism, leucism is one of the most commonly reported types of chromatic anomalies in mammals, however, detailed descriptions of such conditions are rare. We report the first record of a leucistic black howler monkey ( Alou...

Flowers are ubiquitous in primate environments, yet their nutritional advantages are underexamined. Symphonia globulifera is a widely distributed tree exploited by a variety of animals in Africa and the Americas. We collected S. globulifera flower samples consumed by red-tailed monkeys ( Cercopithecus ascanius ) and compared them nutritionally to f...

Significant gaps remain in understanding the response of plant reproduction to environmental change. This is partly because measuring reproduction in long-lived plants requires direct observation over many years and such datasets have rarely been made publicly available. Here we introduce MASTREE+, a dataset that collates reproductive time-series d...

The lives lost and economic costs of viral zoonotic pandemics have steadily increased over the past century. Prominent policymakers have promoted plans that argue the best ways to address future pandemic catastrophes should entail, “detecting and containing emerging zoonotic threats.” In other words, we should take actions only after humans get sic...

Forest loss and degradation are the most significant threats to terrestrial biodiversity in the tropics. Promoting flagship or umbrella species is a strategy that can be used to conserve intact forests and restore degraded ecosystems, conserve biodiversity, and achieve sustainable development goals. The Bale monkey (Chlorocebus djamdjamensis) is an...

In mammal herbivores, fiber digestion usually occurs predominantly in either the foregut or the hindgut. Reports of mechanisms showing synergistic function in both gut regions for the digestion of fiber and other nutrients in wild mammals are rare since it requires integrative study of anatomy, physiology and gut microbiome. Colobine monkeys (Colob...

Parks are essential for protecting biodiversity and finding ways to improve park effectiveness is an important topic. We contributed to this debate by examining spatial and temporal changes in illegal activities in Kibale National Park, Uganda between 2006 and 2016 and used existing data to evaluate how the changes were correlated with the living c...

World-wide declines in arthropod abundance and diversity are a major concern, particularly given their importance in ecosystem functioning. Yet, data documenting long-term trends are rare from the tropics, particularly the Afrotropics. Here we evaluate changes in the arthropod communities in Kibale National Park, Uganda across almost four decades....

With open-access publishing authors often pay an article processing charge and subsequently their article is freely available online. These charges are beyond the reach of most African academics. Thus, the trend towards open-access publishing will shift the business model from a pay-wall model, where access to literature is limited, to a pay-to-pub...

Background Young adult offenders represent a third of the UK prison population and are at risk of poor health outcomes including drug and alcohol misuse, self-harm and suicide. Court diversion interventions aim to reduce the negative consequences of formal criminal justice sanctions and focus resources on addressing the root causes of offending. Al...

Although selecting advantageous sleeping sites is crucial for nonhuman primates, the extent to which different factors contribute to their selection remains largely unknown for many species. We investigated hypotheses relating to predator avoidance, food access, and thermoregulation to explain the sleeping behavior of Bale monkeys ( Chlorocebus dja...

Background Tropical forests are repositories of much of the world’s biodiversity and are critical for mitigation of climate change. Yet, the drivers of forest dynamics are poorly understood. This is in large part due to the lack of long-term data on forest change and changes in drivers. Methodology We quantify changes in tree abundance, diversity,...

With open-access publishing authors pay an article processing charge and subsequently their article is freely available online. These charges are beyond the reach of most African academics. Thus, the trend towards open access publishing will shift the business model from a pay-wall model, where access to literature is limited, to a pay-to-publish o...

Tropical forests store 40-50% of terrestrial vegetation carbon. Spatial variations in aboveground live tree biomass carbon (AGC) stocks remain poorly understood, in particular in tropical montane forests. Because of climatic and soil changes with increasing elevation, AGC stocks are lower in tropical montane compared to lowland forests. Here we ass...

Tropical forests store 40–50 per cent of terrestrial vegetation carbon1. However, spatial variations in aboveground live tree biomass carbon (AGC) stocks remain poorly understood, in particular in tropical montane forests2. Owing to climatic and soil changes with increasing elevation3, AGC stocks are lower in tropical montane forests compared with...

Open access to the scholarly literature is crucial for African academics but, without urgent action, the move from paywall to pay-to-publish wall will continue to disenfranchise researchers. In an unpublished study, we looked at the 40 journals with the highest impact factors in our field (ecology), and found that the average article-processing c...

Twenty years ago, we published an assessment of the threats facing primates and with the passing of two decades, we re‐evaluate identified threats, consider emerging pressures, identify exciting new avenues of research, and tackle how to change the system to rapidly advance primate and primate habitat conservation. Habitat destruction and hunting h...

In socially living mammals, females often form highly differentiated and stable social relationships, commonly with genetically related individuals, which leads to social clusters within groups (i.e. matrilines). However, in primates, research on female social relationships commonly focuses on species and populations with female philopatry and the...

Research is an interconnected global endeavor. Networks of research collaborations are often using Social Networks Analysis. Its variant Spatial Social Networks allowing explicit embedding of spatial information in the network. Variations in incorporating spatial information results in multiple conceptualizations of networks, enabling exploration o...

Background: In mammal herbivores, the digestion of fiber usually occurs predominantly in either the foregut or in the hindgut. However, how both gut regions function synergistically in the digestion of fiber and other nutrients has rarely been reported in wild mammals. This requires an integrative study of host anatomy, physiology and gut microbiom...

Tropical forests are the most diverse and productive ecosystems on Earth. While better understanding of these forests is critical for our collective future, until quite recently efforts to measure and monitor them have been largely disconnected. Networking is essential to discover the answers to questions that transcend borders and the horizons of...

Background: Tropical forests are repositories of much of the world’s biodiversity and are critical for mitigation of climate change. Yet, the drivers of forest dynamics are poorly understood. This is in large part due to the lack of longitudinal data on forest change and changes in drivers. Methodology: We quantify changes in tree abundance, divers...

Dietary protein is often considered a factor that limits the growth of primate populations. The ratio of crude protein (CP) to fiber in common mature leaves in a forest reliably predicts colobine biomass across Africa and Asia. This relationship is puzzling because CP of mature leaves is notably high in some forests, including Kibale National Park,...

Establishing protected areas (PAs) is an essential strategy to reduce biodiversity loss. However, many PAs do not provide adequate protection due to poor funding, inadequate staffing and equipment, and ineffective management. As part of China's recent economic growth, the Chinese government has significantly increased investment in nature reserves...

Objectives Although fermented food use is ubiquitous in humans, the ecological and evolutionary factors contributing to its emergence are unclear. Here we investigated the ecological contexts surrounding the consumption of fruits in the late stages of fermentation by wild primates to provide insight into its adaptive function. We hypothesized that...

Deforestation represents one of the greatest threats to tropical forest mammals, and the situation is greatly exacerbated by bushmeat hunting. To construct informed conservation plans, information must be gathered about responses to habitat degradation, regeneration, and hunting over a sufficiently long period to allow demographic responses. We qua...

Deforestation has carved tropical forest landscapes into millions of different-sized patches worldwide. Research has focused on the effect of patch size on biodiversity, while neglecting patch quality effects and leaving geographic and interspecific variance to patch attributes largely unexamined. Here, we assess how patch size and quality affect t...

The study of animal movement has gained impetus in recent years with improvements in telemetric technologies which enable high resolution tracking, providing researchers with a wealth of animal "big-data". Coupling such movement data with information about the environments in which the animal moves provides a rich data source that can be exploited...

Apposite conceptualization and measurement of resource variation is critical for understanding many issues in ecology, including ecological niches, persistence and distribution of populations, the structure of communities and population resilience to perturbations. We apply the nutritional geometry framework to conceptualize and quantify the respon...

The term ‘smart forest’ is not yet common, but the proliferation of sensors, algorithms, and technocentric thinking in conservation, as in most other aspects of our lives, suggests we are at the brink of this evolution. While there has been some critical discussion about the value of using smart technology in conservation, a holistic discussion abo...

Evidence suggests that a decline in people’s exposure to nature corresponds to decreasing support for nature—a phenomenon we call extinction of nature experience. Here, we evaluate three current trends in conservation research and consider if they contribute to a decrease in exposure to nature. We suggest that while using sensors, algorithms, techn...

We report the discovery and sequence-based molecular characterization of a novel virus, lanama virus (LNMV), in blood samples obtained from two wild vervet monkeys (Chlorocebus pygerythrus), sampled near Lake Nabugabo, Masaka District, Uganda. Sequencing of the complete viral genomes and subsequent phylogenetic analysis identified LNMV as a distinc...

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Background: Fruit scent is increasingly recognized as an evolved signal whose function is to attract animal seed dispersers and facilitate plant reproduction. However, like all traits, fruit scent is likely to evolve in response to conflicting selective pressures and various constraints. Two major constraints are (i) phylogenetic constraints, in w...

Objectives: Social animals often have dominance hierarchies, with high rank conferring preferential access to resources. In primates, competition among males is often assumed to occur predominantly over reproductive opportunities. However, competition for food may occur during food shortages, such as in temperate species during winter. Higher-rank...

Understanding the ecological and social factors that influence group size is a major focus of primate behavioural ecology. Studies of species with fission-fusion social organizations have offered an insightful tool for understanding ecological drivers of group size as associations change over short temporal and spatial scales. Here we investigated...

The habitats of wild primates are increasingly threatened by surrounding anthropogenic pressures, but little is known about primate exposure to frequently used chemicals. We applied a novel method to simultaneously measure 21 legacy pesticides (OCPs), 29 current use pesticides (CUPs), 47 halogenated flame retardants (HFRs), and 19 organophosphate f...

Threats to biodiversity are well documented. However, to effectively conserve species and their habitats, we need to know which conservation interventions do (or do not) work. Evidence-based conservation evaluates interventions within a scientific framework. The Conservation Evidence project has summarized thousands of studies testing conservation...

Colobine monkeys generally spend less time each day engaged in social interactions than other primates. However, a notable feature of their social interaction involves females exchanging infants (i.e., infant handling). Here, we report on the handling of an infant in relation to pelage color change in a group of black-and-white colobus (Colobus gue...