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Sara Ruballos
I am a field-based primatologist, primarily interested in the social and ecological drivers of behavioural flexibility in wild great apes, and what this can tell us about hominin evolution using a comparative perspective. In particular, I research behavioural flexibility as it relates to the domains of communication, tool use, foraging ecology and nonhuman cultural traditions. I am also interested in improving our understanding of the behavioural strategies primates can use to adapt and survive in increasingly anthropogenic environments and under climate change. To date, my research has focussed on wild populations of great apes across Africa, where I also work on improving remote methods for studying these animals in the field, such as passive acoustic monitoring and camera trapping. This research has led me to expand my interest in great apes to the behavioural ecology and conservation of other nonhuman primate species as well.
Previous publications on this behaviour have demonstrated that chimpanzee AST is rare among wild populations and may represent a new cultural behaviour found only in West Africa. My recent publication in collaboration with acoustic engineers (PRISM lab, CNRS & Aix-Marseille University) showed that chimpanzees choose tree species that are optimal for sound production and therefore the behaviour appears important for communication. I am currently conducting additional spatial and behavioural analyses of chimpanzee AST from data collected in 2017. These data will ultimately be compared to PanAf data collected in 2014 at the same site, also using camera traps, as well as a genetic census in collaboration with Mimi Arandjelovic (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology). Additional ongoing projects include 3D modeling of AST sites to describe and digitally preserve the visual, long-lasting components to this behaviour that persist in the landscape.
I am interested in improving remote methods used to monitor and observe wild primates in the field. I have published on the use of passive acoustic monitoring for primates and the behavioural effects of camera trapping on great apes and other wildlife. Current projects include collaborations with computer scientists (Laboratory for BioSignal Processing, Leipzig University of Applied Sciences & University of Osnabrück) to apply deep learning algorithms for improving automated detection and classification of chimpanzee sounds from continuous audio recordings. My affiliation with the PanAf also includes being a scientific moderator of Chimp&See, where citizen scientists help us to classify thousands of camera trap videos recorded at PanAf sites, where I also lead various mini-projects.
Leopards are one of the most abundant natural predators for all primates, big and small, across Africa but we know little about their direct effects on primate behaviour despite predation being considered one of the major selection pressures driving primate evolution. I am currently leading a mini-project on Chimp&See to identify individual leopards caught on camera traps to obtain precise densities across all PanAf sites, where we will eventually test whether leopard abundance affects primate species diversity as well as their spatio-temporal activity patterns and behaviour.
I am beginning a project to evaluate the degree of bipedalism observed in wild chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas using camera trap videos to test multiple hypotheses regarding the origins and adaptive benefits of bipedalism, given that our species is the only obligate biped living today. I will be applying state-of-the-art methods for quantifying bipedal postures and movement, namely DensePose software, which has recently been adapted for use with nonhuman great apes in a collaboration between the PanAf and Facebook AI. In addition to PanAf data, this project includes collaborations with bonobo and gorilla field site directors Gottfried Hohmann, Barbara Fruth (Liverpool John Moores University), Martin Surbeck (Harvard University) and Martha Robbins (Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology).
"Our goal was to see how chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas react to unfamiliar objects in the wild since novel object experiments are often used in comparative psychology research, and we wanted to know if there were any differences among the three great apes," says Ammie Kalan, a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. "We were specifically surprised by the differences in reactions we observed between the chimps and bonobos. Since they're sister species and share a lot of the same genetic makeup, we expected them to react similarly to the camera, but this wasn't the case."
"The chimpanzees were overall uninterested in the camera traps--they barely seemed to notice their presence and were generally unbothered by them," Kalan says. "Yet the bonobos appeared to be much more troubled by camera traps; they were hesitant to approach and would actively keep their distance from them."
Individuals within a species reacted differently to the cameras as well. For example, apes living in areas with more human activity, such as near research sites, can get desensitized to unfamiliar items and become indifferent toward such encounters in the future. However, another member of the same species who has had less exposure to strange or new items, might be more interested in them. The age of the ape plays a similar role. "Younger apes would explore the camera traps more by staring at them for longer periods of time," Kalan says. "Like human children, they need to take in more information and learn about their environment. Being curious is one way of doing that."
Despite this potential complication, using camera traps to monitor populations of animals in the wild is still one of the most useful options. "Our knowledge tends to be limited by the number of groups or number of populations we're able to study, but using monitoring technology like camera traps is an effective way of solving that problem," Kalan says. "I think it's really interesting from a behavioral flexibility perspective to consider how wild animals react to these new technologies. I would love for more researchers to investigate novelty responses while doing monitoring surveys."
"Our goal was to see how chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas react to unfamiliar objects in the wild, mostly to determine if the presence of research equipment, like camera traps, has any effect on their behavior and if there were any differences among the three great apes," says Ammie Kalan (@ammiekalan), a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. "We were specifically surprised by the differences in reactions we observed between the chimps and bonobos. Since they're sister species and share a lot of the same genetic makeup, we expected them to react similarly to the camera, but this wasn't the case."
Individuals within a species reacted differently to the cameras as well. For example, apes living in areas with more human activity, such as near research sites, can get desensitized to unfamiliar items and become indifferent toward such encounters in the future. However, another member of the same species who has had less exposure to strange or new items, might be more interested in them.
The age of the ape plays a similar role. "Younger apes would explore the camera traps more by staring at them for longer periods of time," Kalan says. "Like human children, they need to take in more information and learn about their environment. Being curious is one way of doing that."
The laparoscope is a chopstick-sized instrument that has a camera with a light on one end. It goes through a port inserted through the small incision, and Dr. Kalan uses this high-resolution camera on the laparoscope to visualize the operative field. The camera on the laparoscope sends back images to a monitor in the operating room. Dr. Kalan uses these to guide other instruments that perform the operation.
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