Category: New Paper

Summer 2024 highlights

8/16/2024

Most of us were on field expeditions in Madagascar and Mexico over the summer. In addition to a productive field season, we also made great achievements in other areas

Awards

Kat and Vero recieved awards for best student presentations at the annual meeting of ATBC (Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation) and the FSD (Frugivores and Seed Dispersal) symposium
Vero was awarded an NSF - DDRIG (Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant)
Onja selected as a Hellman Fellow

Publications

Vero's 1st PhD Chapter reviewing the role of nocturnal, small-bodied and ominovorous lemurs published in Biotropica
A paper led by collaborator Seheno Andriantsaralaza about the seed dispersal of an iconic Malagasy baobab species published in Biotropica
Research examining the structure of plant-lemur interactions published in Conservation Biology
Another paper investigating the biotic and abiotic dispersla of a large-seeded keystone genus in Madagascar, Canarium, published in Biodiversity and Conservation

Others

Student affiliate Tanjona defendes his Master thesis at the University of Antananarivo
Dr. Jadelys Tonos starts a new faculty position at San Francisco State University this fall

PhD students Veronarindra Ramananjato & Nancia Raoelinjanakolona, along with colleagues, have a new publication in the American Journal of Anthropology, about a toolkit to improve data quality of multi-researcher datasets for analyzing morphological variation in mouse lemurs:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajpa.24836

Photograph by Veronarindra Ramananjato

Highlights (copied from the article)

Morphological variation is commonly used to infer environmental adaptations and phylogenetic relationships in animal taxa, but multi-researcher datasets can hamper analyses due to inter-observer biases.
Our filtering pipeline markedly improved data quality for downstream analyses and highlights key steps in data quality assessment for generating reliable results.
Across species, mouse lemurs are sexually dimorphic (with larger females), do not follow Rensch's rule for sexual size dimorphism or Bergmann's rule (as larger mouse lemur taxa live in warmer and wetter climates) but are concordant with Allen's rule with regard to having shorter tails in colder environments.

Spring 2023 highlights

5/9/2023

Looking back at our achievements this semester, here are some of the highlights ... now we're off to fieldwork

Awards

Anaid and Nancia were awarded research grants from The Rufford Foundation for their PhD projects in Mexico and Madagascar, respectively
Kat and Vero were selected as Rocca fellows by the Center for African Studies
Rindra was awarded a Primate Action Fund grant
Vero was selected as an International Peace Scholar by the Philanthropic Educational Organization, and received Outstanding GSI Award for her excellent work as a graduate student instructor in IB.

Varecia variegata editorum in Ranomafana National Park. Photo by Onja Razafindratsima

Publications

Onja and colleagues reviewed the importance of regenerating forests for primates in anthropogenic landscapes in this book chapter

Others

Kat passed her Qualifying Exam in April and is now a doctoral candidate
Diary Randriamora joined our group as a mentee through the National Geographic Society STEM Field Assistant Program
Rindra Nantenaina, a PhD student at the University of Antananarivo, Madagascar spent five weeks as a Visiting Student in the lab in Berkeley.

Representative members and friends of the lab, Spring 2023. From left to right: Asher, Mamy-Fy Rakotondrainibe, Anaid Cardenas Navarrete, Kat Culbertson, Rindra Nantenaina, Jade Tonos, Ella Matsuda, Onja Razafindratsima, Kova

Fall 2022 highlights

12/19/2022

As we're toward the end of the fall semester, looking back to how this semester turned out, we're happy to share some highlights ... There were some challenges, ups and downs, but overall it was productive..

Awards

Vero was awarded a Black and Indigenous Scholars Award from the American Society of Mammalogists and a renewal of the Train Faculty Fellowship from WWF
Nancia and Vero were awarded the grant “Lemur Fund” from Re:wild to support their research on lemur ecology in Madagascar’s rainforests

Publications

Anaid & colleagues documented the birth of an infant black-howler monkey in this paper published in Primates (Don't forget to check out the video in the supplementary information!
One of Nancia’s PhD chapter, investigating the robustness of plant-frugivore interaction network in a fragmented rainforest landscape, is published in the journal Conservation Biology.

A newborn howler monkey with its mama. Photo by Anaid Cardenas Navarrete

Graphical abstract of our recent paper in Ecology and Evolution.

A team led by Vero recently reported an unprecedented discovery of arboreal mouse lemurs sleeping in a burrow on the ground in the rainforest of Ranomafana, published in the journal Ecology and Evolution
We reviewed current knowledge about frugivory and seed dispersal in Madagascar in the book The New Natural History of Madagascar.

Others

Anaid passed her Qualifying Exam in December and is now a doctoral candidate
Hasina defended her Master's at the University of Antananarivo in November and then participated in a training on designing a research project in Kenya offered by the Tropical Biology Association
Hasina & Onja are wrapping up this month their participation in the program Global STEM Field Assistant by National Geographic Society but will continue collaborating.
Rindra was selected to participate in the iDiv Summer School in Leipzig, Germany in August to develop skills in molecular evolutionary biology in Biodiversity
We were happy to have Dr. Seheno Andriantsaralaza (University of Antananarivo) and Dr Denise Spaan (University of Veracruz) join us as Visiting Scholars this semester. We enjoyed the intellectual exchanges and looking forward for future collaborations.

Representative sample of the Razafindratsima lab, Fall 2023 at the lab's holiday party, celebrating our diversity with a diversity of food from different countries/regions. From left to right: Jade Tonos, Jessica Stubbs, Anaid Cardenas Navarrete, Kat Culbertson, Vero Ramananjato & Onja Razafindratsima.

Back from the field ...

8/31/2022

Some happy news to share from the past few months:
1) Awards:

Anaid was awarded a Latin American Student Field Research Award and a Primatological Conservation Inc grant.
Nancia received an Ikala STEM Small Grants for Research.
Both Rindra & Nancia were awarded a Duke Lemur Center’s Field Improvement Grant for Malagasy Students.
Vero was selected as a Philomathia Graduate Fellow in Environmental Sciences and a Rocca Fellow.

2) Publications:

Kat and her colleagues published a paper in Biotropica about the challenges of forest restoration in Madagascar
Onja & colleagues published a set of principles and practical suggestions for equitable fieldwork in biology, an article about the future of sub-Saharan Africa’s biodiversity in the face of climate and societal change, and about potential of social media to promote primate conservation at the local level (this last one co-authored with Nancia & Vero)
Anaid & colleagues published a paper about the global importance of Indigenous Peoples, their lands, and knowledge systems for saving the world’s primates from extinction

3) We recently came back from successful fieldwork. You may look at some of our field pictures here and read about Jade's most recent field update here. More updates soon..

New paper: Individual-based frugivore-plant network

9/15/2021

We have a new paper in Oikos examining how space and variation between individual plants affect movement and visitation by frugivores foraging on individual fruiting plants.

Graphical abstract from Tonos et al. Oikos 2021

New paper: Seed dispersal limitation in forest edge habitats

9/15/2021

We have a new paper in the Frontiers of Ecology and Evolution investigating how differences between frugivore communities at the forest edge and interior habitats of a diverse tropical rainforest relate to patterns of animal-mediated seed dispersal and early seedling recruitment.

Main findings:

Lemur communities across the forest edge-interior gradient in this system showed the highest species richness and variability in body sizes at intermediate distances; the community of birds showed the opposite pattern for species richness.
Three large-bodied frugivores, known to be effective dispersers of large seeds, tended to avoid the forest edge.
The forest edges received a lower rate of animal-mediated seed dispersal compared to the interior habitats.
The seeds that were actively dispersed by animals in forest edge habitats were smaller in size than seeds dispersed in the forest interior. This pattern was found despite a similarity in seed size of seasonally fruiting adult trees and shrubs between the two habitats.
Despite these differences in dispersal patterns, we did not observe any differences in the rates of seedling recruitment or seed-size distribution of successful recruit species.

Forest edge in Ihofa Forest, Madagascar. Photo by O. Razafindratsima

Open Access costs for African Scholars

8/10/2021

We have a new paper in Nature Correspondence discussing the dilemma of African scholars regarding publishing open access.

Forests, trees & poverty alleviation

8/9/2021

We have a new paper in Forest Policy and Economics addressing the "need for greater integration of forests and trees in development policy"

New paper: Mouse lemur microhabitat use

8/4/2021

We have a new paper in the International Journal of Primatology investigating several aspects of the microhabitat structure that the rufous mouse lemur (Microcebus rufus) might prefer and examining how this structural preference varies across a heterogeneous landscape of forests with different disturbance levels.

A mouse lemur in the rainforest of Ranomafana National Park. Picture courtesy of Vero Ramananjato.

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Summer 2024 highlights

New paper

Spring 2023 highlights

Awards

Publications

Others

Fall 2022 highlights

Awards

Publications

Others

Back from the field ...

New paper: Individual-based frugivore-plant network

New paper: Seed dispersal limitation in forest edge habitats

Open Access costs for African Scholars

Forests, trees & poverty alleviation

New paper: Mouse lemur microhabitat use

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