IRES Track I: Research opportunities in behavioral and ecological data collection at the Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project, Kenya.

Iowa State University, Ames IA

Investigators

Abstract

This International Research Experiences for Students (IRES) project will engage four U.S. undergraduates and one U.S. graduate student in the study of wild olive baboons (P. anubis) at the Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project (UNBP) in Kenya for 8 weeks during the summer. There, participating students will learn the methods of behavioral and ecological data collection from senior UNBP researchers, and they will also have the opportunity to develop their own research projects based on their interests within the broad topics of baboon behavior and ecology. This experience will benefit the participating students by training them in behavioral and ecological data collection methods and by giving them the opportunity to conduct fieldwork in a foreign country, which will greatly increase their likelihood to succeed when pursuing graduate or professional careers in fields related to animal behavior and ecological monitoring. As our closest living relatives, other primates are the most common models for understanding the evolution of our own species. In particular, olive baboons are highly intelligent, socially complex, and behaviorally flexible animals that live in an ecological context similar to that in which our own species likely evolved. The long-term data collected at the UNBP have tracked the ways in which these animals can adapt – both behaviorally and physiologically – to a rapidly changing anthropogenic environment, shedding light on the complex interactions between ecology and behavior and contributing to our understanding of how similar processes may have influenced human evolution. Through this IRES, a new generation of researchers will develop their own research projects at the UNBP, benefitting both from the mentorship of experienced baboon researchers and from the decades of data available at this site. The data collected by participating students will not only increase our knowledge of baboon behavior and ecology, but also broadly inform conservation practices that aim to ameliorate human-wildlife conflict and environmental management strategies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.