I’m a population ecologist, evolutionary biologist, and wildlife conservationist. For the last twenty-five years I’ve worked in Central Africa, recently focusing primarily on western gorillas. My research ranges from highly applied topics like wildlife monitoring, park planning, and vaccine trials to more academic work on hominoid social evolution, animal mobility, and the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of emergent viruses. Most of my work has a a quantitative outlook and a conservation motivation. My strong iconoclastic streak often leads me into controversy. Fight the power…
My Approach
My signature modus operandi is I to identify neglected but important issues and shine a light on them. I abhor groupthink and enjoy rocking the boat so that a little fresh water sloshes in. I don’t reflexively accept consensus opinion about what is important or why. Rather, I make a conscious effort to step back and objectively evaluate available evidence, often in the context of theory from ecology, evolutionary biology, and complex systems science. I try to frame the alternatives in terms of explicit hypotheses, then do whatever empirical or analytical work is necessary to test them: everything from boots on the ground fieldwork in remote areas to vaccine trials to Bayesian statistics, simulation modeling, and molecular phylogenetic analyses of data provided by a large network of collaborators. I try to bring the results into the public eye by publishing synthetic papers that tell a broad story. I don’t publish many papers but those I do publish tend to be heavily cited and in high impact journals, including the most cited paper on wild gorillas.
Below you’ll find a link to my publication list and an outline of my more academic research. My more applied work is described in the section of this website dedicated to Conservation.
Ebola
My best known research is on Ebola virus. This includes work on the ape conservation impact of Ebola, it’s wildlife transmission dynamics, and the potential for control through vaccination.
Human Respiratory Virus Spillover
I was part of the research team from the Max Planck and Robert Koch Institutes that for the first time documented that human respiratory virus spillover was the major cause of mortality in wild chimpanzees habituated to close human approach.
Homonoid Social Evolution
Working with former student Robin Morrison and colleagues, we’ve shown that the gorillas societies have the hierarchical social structure previously asserted to be uniquely human. We’ve also shown evidence that, contrary to accepted wisdom, gorillas are territorial.
Animal Mobility
My interests in animal movement date to my dissertation research on the effect of bird colony size and density on ectoparasite transmission. Since then I’ve worked with Denis Boyer to simulation model the optimal balance between memory-based and random search and Julio Benavides and Damien Caillaud on the effect of “hotspot” visitation has on the potential for Ebola control. I’ve also worked with Steve Blake and colleagues to show how the ranging scale of elephants and other seed dispersers determines the spatial pattern of tree aggregation and species diversity.
Fire Ant Invasion
Working with Jim Wetterer, and colleagues, we made the first description of invasive fire ants in Africa. Kate Abernethy, colleagues and I linked fire ant invasion to the importation of logging machinery from South America and described their subsequent expansion at Lope National Park.
Climate Modeling
Then Princeton colleague Somnath Baidya Roy and I did the first meso-scale simulation modeling of the potential impact of deforestation on climate in Central African protected areas.
Poopmaster General
I’ve provided fecal samples for Beatrice Hahn’s groundbreaking work on the origins of important human pathogens, including work showing that the most deadly strain of malaria originated in western gorillas and the second most deadly strain of malaria originated in Central African chimpanzees.