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Jane Goodall Institute's Center for Primate Studies
At the University of Minnesota
Jane Goodall Institute's Center for Primate
Studies was established at the University of Minnesota in 1995
by Dr. Anne Pusey, Distinguished McKnight Professor in the College
of Biological Sciences Department of Ecology, Evolution, and
Behavior.
Pusey, who earned a B.S. in zoology from Oxford University and
Ph.D. in behavioral biology from Stanford University, worked
in Gombe under Dr. Goodall's direction in the 1970s. During
the 1980s, as Goodall's focus shifted from analysis of data
to conservation and education, Pusey became more involved in
research and data analysis. At the time the data, nearly 40
years of Goodall's journals, photos, and slides, was stored
on open shelves in Goodall's home in Dar es Salaam. In 1995,
Goodall, Pusey, and Donald Buford, Director of the Jane Goodall
Institute, decided to move the records to the College of Biological
Sciences at the University of Minnesota for safekeeping.
Dr. Pusey's goal is to digitize the journals and photos to preserve
them and to make them available though the Internet to scholars
as well as school children and the lay public. Work is under
way on the journals, and a fundraising effort has been launched
to cover the costs. Meanwhile, the Imaging Center at the College
of Biological Sciences has scanned all of Goodall's color slides
and has begun work on thousands of black and white photos.
In addition, staff members are copying 600 hours of videotape
shot in Gombe since 1993. All of this material will become part
of an online searchable database.
The goals of the Center for Primate Studies are to:
1. Preserve, organize, and digitize all the paper data (about 350,000 pages)
2. Collect and digitize slides, black and white photographs, and video of the Gombe chimpanzees
3. Create a relational database of all of these materials
4. Analyze this data to advance knowledge about the complex lives of chimpanzees.
Field research projects undertaken by members of the center include:
1. An investigation of meat-sharing and male mating strategies
2. A four-year study of the development and acquisition of termite-fishing skills in infant to ten-year-old chimpanzees
3. A study of vegetation change in and around Gombe National Park over the last 60 years
4. A study of social relationships between females
5. A study of paternity and genetic relationships among the chimpanzees using DNA extracted from feces and hair shed in nests.
Current projects utilizing the long-term data include:
1. Female dispersal and inbreeding avoidance
2. Sex differences in diet
3. Group and individual ranging patterns
At any one time, the staff of the Center consists of Director
Anne Pusey, Research Administrator Joann Schumacher-Stankey, and
a number of graduate students and post-docs and assistants. |
| Images, video and interactives
on this site © Ian Gilby, Elizabeth Vinson Lonsdorf, Bill
Wallauer, Kristin Mosher, JGI, Science North, Canada, or Science
Museum of Minnesota. Please contact
JGICPS for more information. |
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