SEMINAR: Primate Adaptations to High-Elevation Environments

AbstractIn this seminar, Cyril will rely on data collected on black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys in Yunnan (China), mountain gorillas and chimpanzees in Rwanda to better understand behavioural adaptations of nonhuman primates to high-elevation environments. The main questions to be addressed are: i) How do primates balance energy expenditure and energy gain during periods of resource scarcity and low temperatures? ii) What are the drivers of high-elevation range use? iii) How do they cope with ecological challenges such as a complex topography and low productivity? Bio From 2005-2009, Cyril did his PhD at the University of Zurich (Switzerland) which involved a pioneering 20-month study on the social organisation and ecology of wild snub-nosed monkeys in China (done in collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences). From 2009-2011, Cyril worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany). His postdoc included 18 months of research on the socioecology of the mountain gorilla population in Rwanda. In 2012, Cyril took up a position in the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology (now School of Human Sciences) at UWA. Cyril currently holds a joint affiliation with the Centre for Evolutionary Biology in the School of Biological Sciences. Cyril is also a research fellow in UWA’s Africa Research and Engagement Centre and Adjunct Professor at Dali University (China). In 2017, Cyril held a Visiting Scholar appointment in the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Cyril’s primary research interests lie at the interface of primatology, behavioural ecology and evolutionary anthropology and include the evolution of primate/human sociality. A second focus area of research centres on how certain primates are able to cope with the demands of living in marginal montane environments in both the temperate zone and the tropics. Cyril and his collaborators and PhD students are involved in ongoing field research projects on snub-nosed monkeys in China and chimpanzees in Rwanda.