Angolan colobus monkeys in Rwanda's Nyungwe National Park live in supertroops of several hundred individuals. However, very little is known about the ecological preconditions (resource abundance and distribution) that allow these primates to live in such extremely large groups and nothing is known about how these supergroups are internally structured. Our field research is designed to fill this knowledge gap. Collaborator: Kitabi College of Conservation and Environmental Mana

My Ph.D. research (2005-2009) focused on the evolutionary and ecological determinants of multilevel societies in primates, which are characterized by core family units nested into larger bands. They represent one of the least understood and most complex types of primate social systems. In collaboration with Carel van Schaik (University of Zurich) and counterparts at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, I conducted a two-year study on the Yunnan snub-nosed monkey (Rhino