Primatology & Lemur Studies

Extant lemurs span from Microcebus berthae at around 30 grams, the smallest primate in the world, to Indri indri at roughly 7 kilograms. That range is impressive until you learn that within the last two thousand years Madagascar also held Archaeoindris, a lemur estimated at the mass of a male gorilla, along with Palaeopropithecus, a suspensory sloth-like form, and Megaladapis, a koala-like browser.

These species disappeared after human arrival. Teaching lemur biology therefore always includes subfossil work: participants examine casts and, at partner institutions, actual subfossil material from sites such as Ampasambazimba and Ankarana. The extinct fauna is not a footnote; it means every ecological interaction we observe today is a remnant of a richer system, and it reframes questions about seed dispersal, forest structure and regeneration.

Participants leave able to explain why the largest-seeded Malagasy trees may now be functionally without dispersers, and what that implies for forest futures.

The methodological core of the programme is Altmann's sampling framework, taught properly and applied daily. Participants learn focal animal sampling, scan sampling, instantaneous and one-zero recording, all-occurrence sampling for rare behaviours, and the construction of a rigorous ethogram before data collection begins.

They are trained in inter-observer reliability testing, with two observers recording the same focal animal and comparing agreement, which is the step most undergraduate projects omit and the one that determines whether the data mean anything. Groups habituated at long-term partner sites allow follows of several hours, generating activity budgets, social interaction matrices and dominance rankings.

Analysis is taught alongside collection: activity budget comparison, spatial data mapped to home range estimates, and simple statistical testing of hypotheses generated by the participants themselves in the first days of the course.

Lemurs display physiological and behavioural traits that are rare or absent in other primates, and each one is a research seminar in itself. Cathemerality, activity distributed across both day and night, occurs in Eulemur and is essentially unknown in other primates; it appears linked to Madagascar's unpredictable resource seasonality and lunar light levels.

Dwarf lemurs of the genus Cheirogaleus hibernate, storing fat in the tail and reducing metabolic rate for months. Cheirogaleus medius is the only obligate hibernating primate known. Mouse lemurs enter daily torpor. These traits make lemurs central to research on primate energetics, ageing and even human medical questions.

Female dominance is close to universal across lemur species, which contradicts general primate patterns and remains actively debated. Participants collect data relevant to the question, such as feeding priority, agonistic outcomes and spatial displacement, and engage with the competing hypotheses directly rather than as textbook summary.

Lemurs are the most threatened mammal group on the planet, with the large majority of assessed species classed as threatened. The drivers are habitat loss and fragmentation, hunting for bushmeat, and the live pet trade. Several species survive in single fragments of a few square kilometres.

The programme includes fragment-based fieldwork: measuring patch size and isolation, assessing edge effects, surveying canopy connectivity, and evaluating the effectiveness of canopy bridges and corridor plantings. Participants also work with community conservation groups on the human dimension: patrol logistics, alternative livelihood projects, and the practical economics that determine whether a forest survives.

Our teaching staff include working primatologists and university lecturers who publish on these systems, so participants encounter live scientific disagreement rather than settled conclusions. Many participants use the resulting data as the foundation of a dissertation, and a number have gone on to postgraduate research in the same study populations.