Current Projects

Fort De Soto Camera Traps

Fort De Soto County Park is a mostly undeveloped chain of connected keys located at the entrance to Tampa Bay. Working with Prof. Beth Forys, our goal is to increase the knowledge on park wildlife of the public, local college students, and park stakeholders using camera traps to collect otherwise difficult to collect data. Currently, we have 20 passive infrared cameras located in 5 different habitat types throughout Ft. De Soto.  A special thanks to the Tampa Bay Estuary Program for partial funding of the project!

Check out https://desotocams.eckerd.edu/ for more information!

Orangutan Activity at ZooTampa

The CBLab is working with Prof. Highfill (Animal Studies, Psychology) and the Eckerd College Comparative Psychology Lab to monitor zoo-housed mawas behavior at ZooTampa. Specifically, our project is  looking at the effects of keeper enrichment on individual activity budgets and habitat use.

Animal Behavior at Tuanan 

Tuanan Research Station is a peat swamp forest located in the MAWAS Conservation Area near the Kapuas River in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. The site was established in 2002  researchers have been observing wild orangutan behavior continually since July 2003. It is estimated that the forests in and around Tuanan have one of the highest densities of Bornean orangutans in the world (Husson et al. 2009).  Currently, data is collected through a collaborative agreement between UNAS and Rutgers University. Projects include behavioral observations, orangutan health monitoring, and passive sampling by camera traps.

Check out www.coreborneo.com for more information!

Lemur Conservation - In situ and Ex situ

The CBLab is working in conjunction with the Lemur Conservation Foundation (www.lemurreserve.org) on several projects pertain to the conservation of several lemur species. Some of our projects include foraging cognition in ring-tailed lemurs (in collaboration with Dr. Fay Clarke and Prof. Lauren Highfill....affectionately known as Lemur Bootcamp), ring-tailed lemur foraging behavior in a semi-free ranging environment (in collaboration with Dr. Erik Patel of LCF and Ethan Gulledge of UNCC), and running a short-term field course on primatology field methods.