Position: Visitor
Since 1997, I have been actively involved in the study of primate behaviour and have observed Hamadryas baboons and ring-tailed lemurs at Bucknell University, Pennsylvania; interned on a golden lion tamarin conservation program at Zoo Atlanta, Georgia; and assisted with an ongoing, long-term study of spider monkeys in Santa Rosa National Park, Costa Rica. I then conducted two years of field research on the Zanzibar red colobus monkey in Tanzania toward my PhD degree supervised by Phyllis Lee at the University of Cambridge. I aim to address the research questions outlined below on Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea, where I assisted with the Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program (BBPP) following my PhD. A longer term goal is to set up a systematic wild primate field research program, incorporating family planning and sustainable income-generating projects, such as beekeeping, in areas of high biodiversity priority and human population growth, such as on Zanzibar and Bioko Islands.
Research Interests
To what extent does behavioural flexibility buffer specialist species against extinction?
The degree to which primate species exhibit behavioural flexibility when confronted with anthropogenic disturbance and other stresses may render the categories ‘generalist’ and ‘specialist’ less useful in predictions of how species will persist under disturbance regimes while threatened or endangered. There is growing evidence from studies on wild ‘specialist’ primates of behavioural adaptations that, in some cases, call for revision of the dietary guild into which species are categorized. Adaptations include habitat and dietary shifts, locomotion through discontinuous canopy and increased terrestriality, invasion of novel environments and ecotones, crop-raiding, and modification of dynamics within polyspecific associations. While there is no question that variation exists among species in plastic responses and that extinction risk is non-random, assuming that species such as red colobus, generally considered to be specialist forest-dwellers, are relatively more extinction-prone than guenons and reliable indicators of the level of disturbance in forest communities, needs to be balanced with their capacity to adjust behaviourally in the short and long-term to diminish the effects of environmental heterogeneity and stochasticity. The study of extinction would thus benefit from data on populations that survive episodes of biological impoverishment. I would like to investigate to what extent the following characteristics are associated with persistence: Social learning, which acts to propagate novel behaviour that extends beyond a species’ norm of reaction; propensity to form and behavioural synchrony within polyspecific associations within which species are exposed to a greater number of ecological affordances; mobility; innovation; and niche construction. Ultimately, persistence traits would be balanced with vulnerability traits (e.g. island endemism, large body size) by the IUCN in the rankings of species and projections of extinction risk.
What is the significance of habitat refuges for the population persistence of endangered primates?
Refuge use by prey species including primates to reduce non-human predation risk is well-documented; however, the efficacy of refuge use by primates hunted by humans has not been evaluated despite the long history of human predation on primates. From a primate’s perspective, human hunters are predators as much as raptors or carnivores and human predation can be a strong selective agent acting differentially across habitats and species. I would like to explore the efficacy of habitat refuge use by primates in the context of anthropogenic disturbance and compare primate abundance and density compensation among refuges and between refuges and the surrounding landscape. I am also interested in applying least-cost path analysis in ArcGIS to predict dispersal potential of primates from refuges and fragments following policy changes and while planning corridors.
Other research interests:
- Modifying techniques for estimating density and abundance of primate populations particularly (1) incorporating sound-only data, widely used by ornithologists to estimate bird densities, into estimates of primate populations, especially those inhabiting dense forests or those that are hunted and thus flee quickly prior to being seen by observers and (2) standardizing ‘recky walks’.
- Comparing island and mainland primate fauna at the level of the genus.
- Using agro-tourism as a tool in reconciling human and non-human primates at the perimeters of protected areas.
Links:
Zanzibar Department of Commercial Crops, Fruits and Forestry
Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program
Investigadores del Área de Conservación Guanacaste
PhD Thesis:
Behavioural Flexibility and Demography of Procolobus kirkii across Floristic and Disturbance Gradients
[pdf]
Published abstracts
Nowak K, Lee PC. 2007. Behavioural Flexibility and Population Persistence of a ‘Specialist’ Primate.
Primate Eye 89: 20-21.
Nowak, K. 2006. Strategies of Procolobus kirkii for Water Obtainment in Saline Environments.
Primate Eye 86: 22-23.
Publications
Under Review
Nowak K, Cardini A, Elton S. Evolutionary Acceleration in an Endangered African Primate:
Speciation and Divergence in the Zanzibar Red Colobus Monkey. Submitted to International Journal of Primatology.
Nowak K. Frequent Water Drinking by Zanzibar Red Colobus (Procolobus kirkii) in a Mangrove
Forest Refuge. Submitted to American Journal of Primatology.
In Preparation
Nowak K, Lee PC. Abundance and Conservation of Zanzibar Red Colobus in Unprotected
Coral Rag Forest. In preparation, to be submitted to Biological Conservation.
Nowak K, Lee PC. Population Structure and Demographic Resilience of Zanzibar Red Colobus in
Mangrove Forest. In preparation, to be submitted to Folia Primatologica.
Presentations
Nowak K. 2007. Mediating Extinction Risk through Behaviour. University of Stirling, Department of
Psychology, UK.
Nowak K. 2005. Sustaining Islands: Biological and Cultural Endemism. Governor’s Camp, Kenya.
Nowak K. 2004. Co-occurrence of Zanzibar Red Colobus and Duiker in Kiwengwa Forest
Reserve, Zanzibar. International Duiker Symposium, Zanzibar, Tanzania.
Nowak K. 1999. Effects of Effort on Food Preferences in Lemurs and Pigeons. Bucknell
University Research Symposium, USA.
