I received my M.Sc. on Ecology and Environment at the Animal Biology Department from the Faculty of Sciences Antananarivo, based upon a habitat used of collared brown lemur (Eulemur collaris) in Madagascar’s littoral southeastern forest.  I carry out lemur’s fieldwork to develop their distribution and census data in Madagascar. I’ve also published lemur surveys in different regions of the island such as western dry forest, Central high plateau and eastern evergreen humid forest. I’m member of IUCN Primate Specialist Group and scientific member of GERP association (Scientists group for primate’s studies in Madagascar). I’m a faunal expert and project manager within Biotope Madagascar. 

Domaines d’expertise/Area of expertise:  Lemur biogeography

Espèces étudiées / Species: All 

Dr Christoph Schwitzer has been Chief Zoological Officer and Deputy Chief Executive of the Bristol Zoological Society (BZS) since August 2018, with Executive Board responsibility for BZS’s two animal collections at Bristol Zoo Gardens and the Wild Place Project, as well as its veterinary services, its Institute of Conservation Science and Learning (including the Learning, and Field Conservation and Science departments), its public programming, and for Wild Place Project’s general daily operations. Prior to this he was BZS’s Director of Conservation for four years (2014–2018) and Head of Research for eight years (2006–2014). Before coming to Bristol, Christoph worked as part of the primatological research group at Cologne Zoo, Germany, and spent two years in Madagascar building a field station and heading a lemur research and conservation programme. Christoph gained his PhD in Zoology from the University of Cologne in 2003 and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of the West of England since 2013. He is the Deputy Chair and Red List Authority Coordinator of the IUCN Primate Specialist Group. He was a Vice President of the International Primatological Society between 2012 and 2016 and is currently the Vice President of the Association Européenne pour l’Etude et la Conservation des Lémuriens, a consortium of European zoos dedicated to lemur conservation. He is a trustee of the Natural History Consortium, serves on the Council of BIAZA and is a member of the EAZA Research Committee and the EAZA Prosimian TAG, and adviser to the EAZA Callitrichidae TAG.

My research is focused on the origin and evolutionary history of Madagascar’s modern fauna, one of the most unique and endemic on the planet. How, when, and from where they arrived has remained largely unknown due to a 65-million-year gap in the fossil record that occurs precisely within the time period during which the modern vertebrate groups are hypothesized to have colonized the island. My research has sought to fill in this “gap” in a number of different ways. I also continue to collaborate with colleagues on projects examining dental development, life history, anatomy and growth in both living and subfossil lemurs. These collaborations have examined life history variation in extant and extinct primates (including electron microscopy and ontogenetic studies of dental eruption and root formation), and collected data from captures of wild lemurs to characterize their growth and health in pristine forest and disturbed fragments.

Domaines d’expertise/Area of expertise:  Subfossil lemurs, Lemur growth and dental development, Lemur life history

Espèces étudiées / Species: Propithecus diadema

As a primate ecologist I am interested in how habitat change affects the behavior and the biology of Madagascar primates. My work focuses on how primate populations directly respond to forest degradation, fragmentation. Since 2003 my project on wild ring-tailed lemurs, Lemur catta,  studies how both immediate and long term environmental factors, such as climate and anthropogenic change affect Malagasy primate behavior and biology. Key components include yearly monitoring of health and population dynamics. This data set is unrivaled among current primate research, and is extremely relevant to on-going work on the effects of climate and habitat change on the world’s endangered animals and how primates adapt to such changes.

Domaines d’expertise/Area of expertise: Behavior, ecology, morphometrics, parasites and maladies

Espèces étudiées / Species: Lemur catta (the ring-tailed lemur)