Let’s break it down: The scientific research.

My National Geographic funded project is broken into three sections, based on the three tenets of Fundación Para La Tierra: scientific research; community engagement and education.

Let’s talk about the scientific research.

This part of my project is also the research that I have been doing for my PhD (Conservation Science) with the University of Aberdeen. I am working to determine the ecological requirements of the hooded capuchin in disturbed and pristine Paraguayan Upper Paraná Atlantic Forest. There is so much I want to know about how this incredible little species is coping with the massive scale of habitat destruction in this forest. Does the composition and size of their groups change? Does their home range size change? Do they have to alter their diet? CAN they alter diet? Do they use the space available to them differently? How does the level of habitat disturbance affect their activity budgets?

So many questions! So how do I try to answer them.

I spend 15 days per month at my field site at Nueva Gambach, with a small team of volunteers who come to help out and learn about behavioural data collection. We get up and leave the house about half an hour before the sun rises so that we can make it to the capuchins sleeping site before they wake up. Every half an hour (or when the monkeys move more than 100m) we mark a GPS locations on our GPS units. As soon as they wake up we use a technique called “scan sampling” to record the behaviour of every visible individual every minute. My focal group has 22 individuals (three adult males, six adult females, seven subadults (three females, two males and two unidentified sex), three juveniles (one male, one female and one unidentified sex) and 3 infants). This makes recording data a huge challenge. These monkeys are very active, fast moving and the habitat is dense and difficult to move through.

We use dictaphones to record behaviour as it is the only way to make sure you aren’t missing anything. Trust me, I have tried everything. The number of times I have fallen flat on my face trying to write things down on a data sheet and clipboard or looked up from writing to find the group had vanished. It has to be voice recordings!

First, we record the identity of the individual, or at least age and sex! Capuchins are not obviously sexually dimorphic and telling them apart can be tough for beginners. I tend to look for physical indicators first – the shape and size of the tufts, obvious scars (one of my subadult females is missing an eye) or if there are any clear colour differences (one of my adult males at Laguna Blanca had a big tuft of white hair sticking out the back of his black cap). Adult males and females are the easiest to tell apart. The males are big and muscular. The females are finer and have ridiculous shaped forehead tufts. I had a female called Alien in O Group at Laguna Blanca who looked like a flying saucer had landed on her forehead, and another female in F Group who looked like someone had stuck pom poms to her face. Very distinctive.  With the subadults and juveniles it’s much harder. They look very, very similar and to positively sex them you have to get a look at their genitals.

Adult male - note the big square head

Alien with her huge rectangular tuft.

Once we know who we are looking at, we record how many metres high in the tree the individual is, what it is doing and if any other individual is within 1m. If the individual is eating, we need to record what it is eating and any other useful information like how it is processing the food or if it is using one hand in preference over the other.

When the monkeys start to move things get even harder, and often even more fun. You need to try and stay with them for as long as possible. Not always easy. In fact, more often than not, very difficult. You can end up thigh deep in a swamp, trying to keep your equipment dry and continue you follow. Or on your hands and knees crawling under spiky bamboo. Or jumping into the river to get a better view. Sometimes it’s easier to skirt round the edge of the forest and try to cut them off as they head to their next feeding site. A lot of the time we lose them and have to spend hours creeping through the forest in silence, straining our ears for an alarm call.

This carries on until dusk. We try to locate the sleeping site where the monkeys will spend the night and stay with them until after dark. The days can be anything from 11 to 15 hours in the forest depending on the time of year. It is hard, physically and mentally demanding and most of all, it is wonderful. I will never be able to see it as anything less than a privilege to be allowed a glimpse into the lives of these spectacular little monkeys.