Renowned Gibbon Conservationist/Researcher Alan Mootnick passes away
I was incredibly sad to hear about the passing of Gibbon Conservation Center founder and director Alan Mootnick. Many students from CSUF donated their time and money to the center and Alan was always there to welcome us and extremely grateful for anything we could do to help. I know that the gibbons are in good hands but Alan will be extremely missed. If you have not been to the center yet be sure to go on a tour and support them by donating. Be sure to check out these article in memory of Alan’s work and life:
http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-alan-mootnick-20111108,0,5831676.story
http://www.dailynews.com/breakingnews/ci_19273288
NIH Suspends new chimpanzee research grants
Late last year, the National Institutes of Health froze all new grants for studies involving chimpanzees after an Institute of Medicine review found little scientific necessity for using man’s closest genetic relative as a research model.
Dozens of ongoing, federally funded projects will be evaluated according to the new stringent conditions adopted by the NIH, which the IOM says are necessary to justify conducting research on chimpanzees.
This is hopefully a huge step forward in ending research on chimpanzees.
Southern California Primate Research Forum (SCPRF) Nov 13th 2010
Southern California Primate Research Forum:
The Upcoming Forum
Primate disease transmission & conservation
13 November 2010
San Diego State University
Little Theater, Room 161
Directions and Parking
https://sunspot.sdsu.edu/map/
PROGRAM
- 8:30
- Sign in
- 9:00
- Welcome (Erin Riley, Norm Rosen)
- 9:15
- Ronald R. Swaisgood (ICR/San Diego Zoo)
We are the science of saving species? - 10:15
- Coffee Break
- 10:30
- David Morgan (Lincoln Park Zoo/WCS)
Consequences of Sustainable Forestry and Conservation Efforts on Western Lowland Gorillas and Chimpanzees in northern Republic of Congo - 11:30
- Erin Riley – Lunch directions
- 1:00
- Peter Scull (Colgate University)
Modeling infectious Disease in Uganda Mountain Gorillas - 2:00
- James H. Jones (Stanford University)
SIV Pathogenicity in Wild Chimpanzees - 3:00
- Break
- 3:15
- Crickette Sanz (Washington University, St Louis)
Ape Health in Northern Congo: Continuing Concerns and Emerging Threats - 4:15
- Close
ADMISSION: Free to SDSU students with ID; other students $7 (with ID); $12 general admission. Pay at the door.
Please RSVP to Erin Riley at epriley@mail.sdsu.edu for headcount purposes.
FREE PARKING at Parking Structure #4, Levels 1 & 2 ONLY. Directions: From these levels, go up to Level 4 and cross the pedestrian bridge towards the Starbucks at West Commons.
SCPRF Advisory Committee: Norm Rosen (SCPRF/CSUF), Raffaella Commitante(CSUF), Peter Fashing (CSUF), Lynne Miller(Mira Costa College), Jim Moore (UCSD), Nga Nguyen(CSUF), Erin Riley(SDSU)
Posters
Beginning in November 2006, SCPRF plans to host a poster session at the November Forum only; this will be a regular feature of the Nov. Forum, so participants can plan ahead. If you are interested, please see the guidelines below and direct inquiries to Lynne Miller.
The poster session is an excellent venue for Undergraduate and Master’s level students to present their research and gain experience in a friendly and low pressure context. The poster session will convene during the one hour afternoon coffee break.
Please note: poster content does not have to reflect the meeting topic; we will consider posters presenting information on a wide range of subject matter.
This poster session continues to be a great success and we would like very much to see it continue. If you are a student, or know of a student, who is ready to present, please submit names and proposed titles to
- Lynne Miller lmiller@miracosta.edu
Space will be limited, the earlier you respond the more likely we can include the poster.
Posters should be mounted on folding poster boards measuring 36″ X 48″ (when folded they measure 36″ X 24″) which can be purchased at most office supplies stores. General guidelines for how to put a poster together can be found atwww.asp.org/education/howto_onPosters.html or at http://faculty.ucr.edu/~maryb/poster.htm
Back to SCPRF Home
Programs of Past Forums
Wild Chimps Outwit Human hunters
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8962000/8962747.stm
Researchers have found male chimpanzees in Bossou, Guinea successfully deactiving snares put out by hunters. This practice has not yet been seen in other chimpanzee populations.
Snares can seriously injure chimpanzees often causing them to lose limbs and can be fatal as well. The researchers are unsure how the chimpanzees learned the skill as trial and error would be almost impossible. It appears as if the animals “knew” which parts not to touch as they explicitly avoided them.
The Brain and Evolution: An Anthropology Symposium – SATURDAY 04/10/10
An Anthropological Exploration of the Brain, Language, Emotion, Culture, and our Evolutionary Past.
Tentative Outline of Talks:
9am – Coffee and Student Posters
10am – Georg Striedter – Principles of Brain Evolution (evolutionary neurobiology based talk)
11am – Michael Arbib -Mirror Neurons and More: Language and Tool Use
12am – Clark Barrett – (evolutionary psychology based talk)
1pm – Lunch
2pm – Katerina Semendeferi – ( Evolution of emotional and cognitive processes in hominoids)
3pm – Sang-Hee Lee – (Changes in brain morphology over evolutionary time)
4pm – Meet and Greet
Featuring guest speakers:
Georg Striedter, UCI Neurobiology & Behavior
http://striedterlab.bio.uci.edu/StriedterLaboratory/page4/page13/page13.html
Michael A. Arbib – Director, USC Brain Project
http://www.usc.edu/programs/neuroscience/faculty/profile.php?fid=16
Clark Barrett, UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/barrett/
Katerina Semendeferi, UCSD Anthropology/Neuroscience
http://anthropology.ucsd.edu/Faculty_Profiles/semendeferi.html
Sang-Hee Lee, UCR Anthropology
http://faculty.ucr.edu/~shlee/
In addition 2 PSA members as well as 3 other Anthropology students will be presenting posters at the Symposium so come out and support your classmates!
CSUF Anthropology Faculty Makes BBC Earth News! Bale Monkey of Africa
http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8587000/8587712.stm
Researchers from USA, Ethiopia and Norway (including CSUF’s own Dr. Peter Fashing) have helped to shed light on a relatively unknown monkey in Ethiopia known as the Bale monkey, named for the forests of the Bale massif and Hagere Selam regions of southeastern Ethiopia. The bale monkey had been considered to difficult to study due to environmental conditions such as fog and mountainous terrain. The big discovery was that the bale monkey relies on bamboo for its main sustenance. Only one other primate is known for this, the bamboo lemur of Madagascar. Check out the article for more info and look into the paper in The International Journal of Primatology if you are more interested!
Gorillas not Vegetarians?
A new study using DNA techniques found traces of monkeys and duikers in the feces of gorillas in Loango National Park in Gabon. While the news sounds exciting more research is necessary to confirm if the gorillas may actually be consuming meat as opposed to eating insects that feed on mammals or one of the animals contaminating the feces samples before they were collected. Interesting area for future research nonetheless!
