Doctor explains new research on yellow baboons

students and faculty Wednesday night with stories of tracking, studying and compiling data – often from unusual places – on the adaptability of these primates.

With a research team, Altmann, a primatologist at Princeton University, has been studying baboons at Amboseli in East Africa, which is near the base of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The Amboseli Baboon Project focuses on a number of processes at various levels within the baboon population, such as social behavior, genetics, hormones and relations with other species.

In her two-part lecture series on campus, Wednesday’s night lecture, “Better living in a variable and changing environment through flexibility,” Altmann spoke about the effects heat and little rainfall have on baboon reproduction.

To understand these effects, Altmann tracked several groups of baboons and charted female cycles to understand if climate affected the likelihood of successful reproduction.

Field researchers also collected feces samples, which allowed Altmann to track hormonal changes.

However, witnessing changes in the males proved slightly more difficult.

“Baboon males have created most of the complications in our lives,” Altmann said about the difficulty to track physical changes in male’s reproductive cycles versus female’s.

Changes in climate have allowed Altmann and her researchers to see social and eating behaviors alter as well.

As the environment shifted to a more arid climate, the baboons changed their nutrient resources, often by eating the same food but changing their main food sources to what was readily available.

Beginning in the 1970s, the area Altmann and her team studied was a lush woodland, but now the area is an open grassland, which has forced most species to either adapt or leave.

Baboons have also adapted their social interaction to increase or decrease time spent foraging depending on climate changes.

At the end of her lecture, Altmann entertained questions from the audience.

One question about the concept of death in the baboon groups sparked interest among the students as Altmann explained most baboons are “bothered and puzzled by it.”

Most animals disappear over night and Altmann said she and her team haven’t seen many deceased adult baboons.

However, mothers carry their dead infants for several days, she said. If a male is found dead, baboons usually go about their routines as normal.

“You dart an adult male and nobody cares – ‘Oh, another one down and out,'” Altmann joked about the lax reaction the group has to a unresponsive baboon.

Although the lecture was required for ecology majors, Joel Mertin, a graduate student in wildlife ecology, said he enjoyed what Altmann had to say.

“She’s talking about a lot of the same methodologies I’m using,” he said.

Sharon Stocks, a junior majoring in geography, agreed with Mertin. Stocks saw advertisements for the lecture and decided to go because she didn’t know much about baboons.

“It was really interesting and completely outside my area of study. It was enlightening,” she said.

More information about Altmann’s project can be found at www.princeton.edu/~baboon.

-kcashton@cc.usu.edu