NSF East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute for FY 2012 in Singapore

Kwiatt Anne C, Vernon Hills IL

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds Anne Cathleen Kwiatt of the University of Texas at San Antonio to conduct a research project, entitled "Analyzing garbage raiding patterns and diet of urban monkeys in Singapore," during the summer of 2012 at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Singapore. The host scientist is Michael D. Gumert, Ph.D. The Intellectual Merit of the research project is to examine human impact on nonhuman primate behavior and ecology; particularly examining how urban environments impact male and female monkey dietary and behavioral strategies differently. The research examines the degree to which variation in diet, social behaviors, and activity budgets of long-tailed macaque monkeys is affected by urban modified-human environments and explores the ecological constraints placed on these behaviors using both behavioral data collection and stable isotope analysis. Broader Impacts of an EAPSI fellowship include providing the Fellow a first-hand research experience outside the U.S.; an introduction to the science, science policy, and scientific infrastructure of the respective location; and an orientation to the society, culture and language. These activities meet the NSF goal to educate for international collaborations early in the career of its scientists, engineers, and educators, thus ensuring a globally aware U.S. scientific workforce. Results of the research are expected to contribute to primate conservation and management plans. By better understanding dietary variation and the ecological conditions that may promote flexible behavior such as raiding, more effective management plans may be created for urban human-sympatric monkeys in Singapore, as well as throughout Southeast Asia. Additionally, results can contribute to modern conservation and evolutionarily sustainable approaches that increasingly look not only at species on the edge of extinction, but at species succeeding on the edge of human societies.