News & Events
Summer 2010
Professor Peter Slater Guest Lectures in the Tropical Ornithology Course:
Peter Slater completed his B.Sc. in Zoology at the University of Edinburgh in 1964 and went on complete a PhD there in 1968 on the reproductive behavior of Bengalese finches. He took up a Lectureship in Biology at the University of Sussex in the same year and taught there for 16 years, during which time his research was largely concerned with the temporal patterning of behavior. In 1984 he was appointed to the Kennedy Chair of Natural History at the University of St Andrews, and occupied this until 2008 when he was accorded Emeritus status. For the past 30 years his research has been primarily on various aspects of song in birds, in both the laboratory and the field, with studies on vocal learning in particular. Recently, in collaboration with a series of students, this work has been extended to studies of marine mammal vocal behavior. He is an author of over 130 papers and has written several books including, with Clive Catchpole, Bird Song: Biological Themes and Variations (Cambridge, 2nd edn. 2008). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a past-President and medalist of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. For 16 years he was Executive Editor of Advances in the Study of Behavior (Elsevier, San Diego).
Dr. Susan Perry and Dr. Joseph Manson Guest Lecture in the Primate Behavior and Conservation Course
Susan Perry received her BA in Anthropology from Washington University, where she studied captive primates for her honors thesis. When she was a Masters student at the University of Michigan, she did her first primatology fieldwork on mate choice in rhesus macaques at Cayo Santiago. For her PhD research (also at U of M), she started a new field site in Costa Rica, Lomas Barbudal, where she began investigating social relationships and social intelligence in white-faced capuchin monkeys. During her postdoctoral work at University of Alberta, she established collaborations with several other capuchin researchers and initiated the capuchin traditions project. She continued to develop Lomas Barbudal as a study site when she accepted a permanent teaching position at UCLA. In 2001-2006 she took a leave of absence from UCLA to be director of the Cultural Phylogeny group at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. The Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project is in its 19th year of research, and continues to focus on topics such as relationship dynamics, social development, traditions and social learning, communication, mating strategies, and life histories. Perry is co-editor (with D. Fragaszy) of The Biology of Traditions: Models and Evidence, and co-author (with J. Manson) of Manipulative Monkeys: The Capuchins of Lomas Barbudal, which describes the first 15 years of research at the site.
Joseph H. Manson did his first field study of primate behavior in 1987-89, studying female mate choice among the free-ranging rhesus monkeys of Cayo Santiago, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico. Beginning in 1991, he worked with Susan Perry studying social behavior in wild white-faced capuchin monkeys at Lomas Barbudal, Costa Rica. Now a Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr. Manson has collected, analyzed and published data on a variety of aspects of capuchin behavior, including female-female grooming and dominance relationships; females interest in infants other than their own; sexual behavior; reconciliation; and self-directed behavior (scratching and self-grooming) as a measure of stress.
Adopt a kid Costa Rica (AKCR)
Originally founded in 1996 by Reverend Marilyn J. Brewer of Volunteer in Mission, Adopt a Kid is now a Costa Rican non-profit organization dedicated to providing scholarships for students of low income families to attend high school. Although Costa Rica has a free public education system, families still must pay for uniforms, books, transportation, lunches, and other supplies. It costs approximately $150 annually to send a child to school. This is prohibitively expensive as the average monthly salary for many rural families is only $300 a month.
Adopt a Kid strongly believes that education is a fundamental right, not a privilege. Its aim is to provide funding for as many children as possible with hope of improving their quality of life now and in the future. Donations are used to directly fund rural children and to improve the condition of their schools.
For more information on ways in which you can help, please contact:
Israel Mesen at adoptakidcr@gmail.com or contact the DANTA office.
Winter 2009/20010
Dr. Kathy Schick and Dr. Nicolas Toth will guest lecture in the Primate Behavior and Conservation Course.
Kathy Schick is co-director of the Stone Age Institute. She received her Ph.D. in 1984 from The University of California at Berkeley. Her interests in Old World prehistory, palaeoanthropology, archaeological site formation, zooarchaeology, lithic technology, and primate studies have led her to conduct fieldwork in Africa, Asia and Europe, as well as laboratory research in the United States. She was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2004, and received the Distinguished Faculty Research Award from Indiana University in 1997.
Nicolas Toth is co-director of the Stone Age Institue. He received his Ph.D. in 1982 for The University of California at Berkeley. His research interests include African prehistory, palaeolithic studies, the evolution of human intelligence, lithic technology, experimental archaeology, microscopic approaches to archaeology, zooarchaeology, ethnoarchaeology, and primate studies. He is currently involved in experimental investigations of stone tool-making and tool-using behaviors of modern African apes and of the manufacture and use of early Palaeolithic tools. Dr. Toth was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2004.
Summer 2009
DANTA and the Monkey Bridge Project take out the trash and reforest Talamanca
DANTA and the Monkey Bridge Project provided an enormous service to the Talamanca region by cleaning up the area recycling center and aiding reforestation efforts this past July. Recicaribe, the Puerto Viejo recycling organization, was temporarily closed last spring due to management problems. The stop service order was a major setback to local residents who had helped to organize, and depended upon, Recicaribe to collect their recyclable goods. In order to reopen, Recicaribe needed a complete overhaul that included the removal of mounds of non-recyclable material. DANTA student volunteers arrived on the scene in late July to help remedy this problem. Amazingly, they managed to bag and remove an impressive amount of trash within a single morning! Recicaribe reopened its doors this August to the Puerto Viejo community thanks in large part to the hard work of volunteers.
Aside from cleaning up Recicaribe, students contributed to regional reforestation efforts. DANTA students weeded and reorganized the seedling collection at the Talamanca-Caribe Biological Corridor nursery. This important stock of trees is used to reforest former crop and pasture land in the Talamanca region. In yet another reforestation project, students planted seedlings from the Vivero nursery in a block of regenerating forest maintained by the Hotel Punta Cocles.
Event organizers Alaine Berg, ATEC director, and Rachel Killian, Monkey Bridge Project research assistant, helped DANTA and the Monkey Bridge Project contribute to the conservation community in Talamanca. A warm thanks to everyone that participated!
Winter 2008/2009
DANTA students “spruce up” Manzanillo’s beach
January 9, 2009 – Students of the DANTA Winter 2008-2009 Primate Behavior and Conservation field school visited the coastal region of Talamanca County, Costa Rica to participate in community conservation. This tradition, known as the DANTA Volunteer Days, began in June 2006 as a partnership with The Monkey Bridge Project in order to enhance local conservation and management activities while giving students hands-on experience with wildlife conservation projects.
Last November, the Talamanca region suffered severe flooding and landslides, which resulted in widespread damage to several communities. For this reason, we focused our efforts on cleaning and replanting along the small coastal town of Manzanillo. Over the course of the day, we planted approximately 145 seedlings commonly found within the low shrub and tree zones of the Caribbean coast (coconut palm, sea grape, beach almond), removed trash littering the beach, and repaired barriers to prevent motorists from driving over and damaging coastal vegetation.
In addition to the wonderful help from DANTA students, several individuals and groups from the area helped to coordinate this event, especially Alaine and the Talamancan Association of Ecotourism and Conservation (ATEC), Christina Orr, Denis, Watcho, and Crystal and Rose. Many thanks to everyone that contributed!
Follow this link to the ATEC website in order to learn more about flood relief efforts in Talamanca: http://www.ateccr.org.
Dr. Agustin Fuentes will lecture at El Zota Biological Field Station, Costa Rica!
Dr. Fuentes completed a B.A. in Zoology and Anthropology, and an M.A.& Ph.D.in Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He taught in the department of Anthropology and directed the Primate Behavior and Ecology Program at Central Washington University from 1996-2002, and is currently the Nancy O’Neill Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame. His research and teaching interests include the evolution of social complexity in human and primate societies, cooperation and conflict negotiation across primates, including humans, and reproductive behavior and ecology. He is also interested in issues of human-nonhuman primate interactions, disease and pathogen transfer. Fuentes recent published work includes the books: Core Concepts in Biological Anthropology (McGraw-Hill) and Primates in Perspective (co-edited, Oxford University Press) and articles such as “It’s Not All Sex and Violence: Integrated Anthropology and the Role of Cooperation and Social Complexity in Human Evolution” and “The humanity of animals and the animality of humans: A view from biological anthropology” inspired by J.M. Coetzees, Elizabeth Costello in the American Anthropologist, and “Human culture and monkey behavior: Assessing the contexts of potential pathogen transmission between macaques and humans” in the American Journal of Primatology. His current research projects include assessing behavior, ecology, and pathogen transmission in human-monkey interactions in Asia and Gibraltar and examining the roles of cooperation, social negotiation, and patterns of niche construction in primate and human evolution.
Summer 2008
Dr. Dawn Kitchen will lecture at El Zota Biological Field Station
We are pleased to announce that Dawn Kitchen will guest lecture in DANTA’s Primate Behavior and Conservation course in the summer of 2008. Dawn Kitchen has a B.S. in Biology, a Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior (from University of Minnesota), post-doc experience in Psychology (at University of Pennsylvania), and is currently an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The Ohio State University. Despite visiting many different departments, her interests have always been the same- social behavior and vocalizations of non-human primates. Her work has focused mainly on how loud calls mediate male-male competition within and between groups. She used playback experiments on Belizean black howler monkeys to determine that relative number of males in two groups affects intergroup contests overall, but that participation by different group members (based on sex and rank) varies in complex but measurable ways. Working with Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth on Botswana chacma baboons, she determined that male loud ‘wahoo’ displays are honest indicators of fighting ability, and that male behavior changes based on opponent’s rank and the tangible benefits at stake (guarding estrous females, protecting vulnerable offspring). Although aggression and competition are her favorite topics, she is also interested in the evolution of cooperation (or lack thereof), behavioral endocrinology, social cognition, and hybrid behavior.
Dr. Steffen Reichle lectures at El Zota Biological Field Station
"DANTA is pleased to announce that Dr. Steffen Reichle will guest lecture in the Tropical Biology and Conservation course in the summer of 2008. Dr. Reichle, born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1968, received his undergraduate and MSc from the University of Honenheim, and his PhD from the University of Bonn, Germany. Since 1994, he has been working on the taxonomy and ecology of amphibians in Bolivia. He has been the author and co-author of the description of more than 10 species of frogs and snakes. He began working in conservation planning in the late 90s, and since has participated in several ecoregional and site conservation plans, as well as GAP analysis. Currently, he is the science coordinator for The Nature Conservancy (TNC), overseeing their research programs in Peru, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina."
Monkey Bridge Project Update.
The Monkey Bridge Project sends a BIG THANKS to all students of the Summer 2008 DANTA Primate Behavior and Conservation Field School! Since 2006, each DANTA primate class has traveled to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca to participate in Volunteer Days. Each trip has met success and this summer was no exception! From June 24-26, students volunteered for all sorts of tasks ? from collecting data on primate habitat to distributing information to the public ? around the Puerto Viejo community.
There were several highlights of this fourth DANTA Volunteer Days, such as developing the monkey feeder tree selection at Vivero: A Plant Nursery in Puerto Viejo (see photo taken by Robin Schindler). In collaboration with Vivero, the project is selling seedlings of trees commonly fed on by primates and other animals. We hope that these efforts will encourage residents to landscape or reforest with plants useful to the wildlife community and raise funds to continue the project. Follow this link to learn more about the Vivero nursery: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Puerto-Viejo-Costa-Rica/Vivero-A-Plant-Nursery/19498061757.
Continuing our parasite study with collaborator Bruno Levecke, a Ph.D. student at Ghent University, was yet another highlight. At the crack of dawn, student teams tracked down howler monkey groups to collect their feces for analysis. As many of the students can attest to, searching for monkey dung at 5 am is quite an experience!
The Monkey Bridge Project welcomes DANTA Volunteer Days because it enables us to tackle larger projects, such as planting corridors, and draws attention to the need for primate conservation in the south Caribbean region of Costa Rica. Thanks again to all who participated!
Winter 2007/2008
We are pleased to announce that Julie Gros-Louis will guest lecture in DANTA’s Primate Behavior and Conservation course in the winter of 2007/2008.
Julie Gros-Louis (http://www.indiana.edu/~aviary/People.htm). is currently an adjunct faculty member in the department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University. Bloomington. She received her B. S. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in biological-anthropology/zoology (1992). She then went to the University of Pennsylvania for her Master’s (1996) and PhD (2001). She conducted her graduate research on vocal communication and social behavior in white-faced capuchin monkeys in Lomas Barbudal Biological Reserve, Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Her master’s study explored how the trill vocalization functions in social interactions. Her dissertation research involved different observational sampling methods, playback experiments and food placement experiments to investigate the function of food-associated calls and trills. As a postdoctoral fellow under Meredith West and Andrew King at Indiana University, and currently as an adjunct faculty member, she conducts comparative studies of communicative development in songbirds and prelinguistic infants (humans). In addition, she has had research assistantships studying rhesus macaques at Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico and dolphins in Shark Bay, Western Australia. Her primary research interests include social and vocal development, the development and function of communicative behaviors and the role of signalers and recipients in communication systems.
Dr. Karen Sughrue also lectures in the Primate Behavior and Conservation Course
Karen graduated from East Tennessee State University in1992 with a degree in Biology. Afterwards, she worked towards a Masters degree in Life Sciences from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville while employed as a primate keeper at the Knoxville Zoological Gardens. She received her doctorate in Ecology from Pennsylvania State University in 2005. Her dissertation work examined the effects of a known endocrine disrupter on the physiology and plumage coloration of the American goldfinch. Between graduate degrees, Karen spent a year in the rainforests of Suriname studying squirrel monkey and capuchin behavior. She currently does contaminant assessment work as a Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration specialist for the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Concord, NH.
Summer 2007
Community Day
Many thanks to the DANTA class of 2007 for helping making Community Day a smashing success! DANTA students helped prepare food for our annual luncheon and donated much needed school supplies to children from the local community. In a community where the average monthly income for a family is $200 or less, this is much appreciated.
Also, big thanks to the EEE Social Club of Quichita Baptist University for their generous donation of school uniforms and shoes to the children of El Zota!
To learn more about how to help children in the El Zota community and surrounding areas, please contact DANTA at kdingess@danta.info.
The second DANTA Volunteer Days, a significant contribution to the Monkey Bridge Project, took place June 24-26, 2007. During this three day event, DANTA students of the Primate Behavior and Conservation field course descended upon the sleepy towns of Puerto Viejo and Manzanillo to gain hands-on experience in primate conservation.
The Monkey Bridge Project commenced in 2006 to help conserve the nonhuman primate population in the Talamanca region of Costa Rica. The project currently works along the rapidly developing coastal area, where tourism is the primary industry. Connecting the fragmented forest over roads with "monkey bridges" for the mantled howler monkey, white-faced capuchin, and black-handed spider monkey is the primary objective of the project. To date, two monkey bridges connect the coastal and inland forests at Playa Chiquita, and a third bridge is in the works near Punta Uva. Residents have observed howler monkeys, kinkajous, and squirrels on these aerial pathways. The first two bridges are located in the home ranges of at least three howler monkey groups, while all three species range in the location of the upcoming third bridge.
The Monkey Bridge Project involves much more than building and monitoring monkey bridges. This year, DANTA volunteers monitored several howler monkey groups, distributed project information around the area, and developed and maintained a growing biological corridor. The contributions of DANTA students make an enormous impact and the Monkey Bridge Project welcomes forthcoming DANTA visits!
Dr. Kevin Hunt lectures at El Zota Biological Field Station
Talamanca Monkey Bridge Project
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Kevin Hunt will guest lecture in DANTA's Primate Behavior and Conservation Course in the summer of 2007. Kevin Hunt is a Professor of Anthropology. He got his BA at the University of Tennessee (1980), and his MA (1983) and PhD at the University of Michigan (1989). He studied locomotion and posture in chimpanzees and baboons at Gombe in Tanzania, and chimpanzees at Mahale, Tanzania as his dissertation research. Since then he has studied monkey and chimpanzee diet at Kibale in Uganda. His current research focuses dry-habitat chimpanzee ecology at the Toro-Semliki Wildlife Reserve in Uganda. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University from 1989 to 1991 working under the supervision of Richard W. Wrangham, and he has been at Indiana University ever since. His principal research interests are functional morphology of apes and early humans, the evolution of human bipedalism, and australopithecine and ape ecology.
Talamanca:
DANTA students in the Primate Behavior and Conservation field course kick-off the Talamanca Monkey Bridge Project with the installation of 2 bridges and tree planting in the Puerto Viejo/Manzanillo region of Costa Rica. Read more about the project below:
Project Description:
The objectives of economic development and conservation are usually on opposite ends of the spectrum. The resulting conflict is observable in many locations, such as the Talamanca region in southeastern Costa Rica. This region boasts several wildlife refuges but forests outside these protected areas are frequently the target of land conversion. Consequently, deforestation has produced a fragmented landscape that is difficult to navigate for tree-dwelling animals, such as howler monkeys and sloths. The Monkey Bridge Project seeks to alleviate travel constraints for these animals and to better understand primates in fragments, while working in a development context. The main objectives of the project will be: i) to investigate habitat use and distribution of howler monkeys in the disturbance matrix; ii) to install and monitor aerial pathways, which will involve gathering data on bridge-use; iii) to establish natural corridors; iv) to promote education and awareness amongst both local people and the world community of the consequences of habitat fragmentation; v) to investigate local social, economic and political conditions, considered in a global framework, in order to enhance species-specific conservation strategies.
The project began in May 2006 and students from the SUNY-Oneonta/DANTA primate behavior and conservation field school helped springboard this project into action. Support for the project has been overwhelming since the first two bridges were installed and numerous people have provided helpful information regarding potential new bridge sites. Continued involvement from students and local residents is crucial to the continued success of this project. For more information about this project and volunteer opportunities, contact Stacy Linshield (slind@iastate.edu).
DANTA students during the summer 2006 field Courses helped Kids Saving the Rainforest in their conservation initiatives. At Manuel Antonio National Park, they were involved in several fund raising activities and also received a certificate for supporting the installation of an arboreal pathway, a "monkey bridge," for the highly endangered Central American squirrel monkey. As only about a thousand individuals of this species remain in the wild, monkey bridges provide invaluable corridors for connecting their fragmented habitat.
DANTA students host the first ever "community day" at El Zota Biological Field Station. DANTA believes that the success of any conservation project is dependent on community involvement and education. During the summer of 2006, school children from the local villages were invited to El Zota Biological Field Station for environmental education and a bit of fun. DANTA students donated school supplies (pencils, paper, pens, etc.) to the local school teachers. We are expanding on this program in the summer of 2007.
DANTA: Association for Conservation of the Tropics
PO Box 316 DAVENPORT, NY
Phone: (607) 278-9619
