Every year several scientists and students visit the fossil collection to carry out research. A growing number of scientists at the cutting edge of research are scholars who publish on both living and fossil primates and are interested in their historical relationships. Because it holds both living and fossil primates, our Center has been pivotal in enabling research or training of many of these prominent primatologists, such as Drs. Rasmussen, Gebo, Jungers and Fleagle, and has been the site where many others, such as myself, Drs. Ankel-Simons, Godfrey, Hamrick, Holroyd, Bown, Teaford, Gunnell, and Gingerich have found original data for publications. The vast fossil collection therefore stands in the forefront of research in paleoprimatology and is a beacon for graduate and faculty investigations. A similar case is true for our living prosimian colony as it is the largest and most diverse at any one place outside of Madagascar.

     Recent research on fossil primates is proceeding along two fronts. The first of these concerns the origin of Anthropoidea or higher primates--the group to which we belong. Fossils recovered in the late Eocene deposits of Egypt and Algeria show convincingly that these earliest forebears differentiated in Africa. A recent publication of mine, with Drs. Plavcan and Fleagle shows that, initially, anthropoids were very small, were active during the day and lived in large social groups. These findings controvert the idea that first anthropoids have always been larger than prosimians. Skeletal remains of one small anthropoid have shown that its group, or taxonomic family, may be related to the origin of the New World monkeys. Other research on the anthropoid Aegyptopithecus shows convincing ties to the earliest Old World monkeys and apes, and has become pivotal to recent discussions concerning the origin of these primate groups in Africa.

     A continuing series of research projects on living primates have been undertaken at the Center. Jennifer Campbell has been doing a nutritional analysis of our sifakas, bamboo lemurs and aye-aye. As a result, our captive diets are modified to better meet the nutritional needs of these species. In addition, she is taking morphological measurements of the gastrointestinal tracts of all animals that have died here. Carl Erickson carried out groundbreaking research on percussive foraging in the aye-aye. A group from the Department of Anatomical Sciences at SUNY Stony Brook, consisting of Drs. Demes, Jungers and Fleagle, measured th take-off and landing forces of leaping in prosimians. Each April a group of about 20 Stony Brook graduate students visit Duke with Dr. Pat Wright to tour the facility and listen to lectures from DUPC staff and faculty. One Stony Brook student, Nancy Stevens, has carried out research concerning the effects of substrate size, orientation and compliance on primate arboreal quadrupedalism. Our veterinarian, Cathy Williams, has been collecting samples to carry out an analysis of the milk composition of different prosimians. She has also worked with the American Zoological Association to investigate the effectiveness of a male contraceptive for prosimians. Charlie Nunn and Rob Deane, Duke graduate students have undertaken an investigation of ringtailed lemur territoriality. Sonia Cavigelli has studied the time-delay between blood and fecal cortizol levels in ringtailed lemurs. Leslie Digby, Duke faculty member, has studied female reproductive competition and reproductive success in multifemale groups of blue-eyed lemurs, crowned lemurs and ringtailed lemurs.

Duke's semi-free ranging black and white ruffed lemurs were the subject of a reintroduction program to the Betampona Reserve in Eastern Madagascar. These animals were under study before their release by a team of volunteers working for Andrea Katz and Charlie Welsh. At Betampona, Adam Britt and the others have continued their intensive monitoring of the black and white ruffed lemurs that have been released there. Although some individuals released have been predated upon, most have survived and are providing fundamental data on methodology for wild restocking of prosimian primates. For instance, these lemurs have been able to readapt to wild conditions much more effectively than did the South American golden lion tamarin, that has been the most thoroughly studied reintroduced primate previously.