Current Project

Skeletal evidence of baboon adaptability in response to environmental change in the Amboseli basin, Kenya

This project is a collaboration with the Amboseli Baboon Research Project (ABRP), National Museums of Kenya, Institute for Primate Research, University of Nairobi, and Kenya Wildlife Service to curate and study the remains of savannah baboons from the Amboseli Basin of southern Kenya, which have been the focus of long-term observational studies in life by the ABRP.  To date, this project has curated partial or complete naturally accumulated skeletons of over 60 individual baboons as a scientific resource at the National Museums of Kenya’s Division of Osteology. 

Our current NSF-supported research, also in collaboration with the University of North Georgia, examines skeletal evidence of baboon adaptability in response to environmental change in the Amboseli basin.  As modern humans, we are known for our ability to adapt physiologically to diverse environments, mediated in part by variation in life history. Given parallels in habitat preferences and behavioral flexibility, savanna baboons provide a salient model from which to understand adaptive versatility in the human lineage.

This project examines how life history flexibility and its ecological context can be detected in the hard tissue record of savanna baboons from the highly dynamic environment of the Amboseli Basin. By integrating climate records and behavioral data collected from individuals in life with morphological and isotopic proxies of life history and dietary ecology from their skeletons after death, this research tests how hard tissue parameters of dental and body size development, stress, and stable isotope signatures of diet are influenced by early life adversity in baboon physical and social/maternal environments. This research will improve our understanding of how variation in developmental strategies in primates relates to variable environments, and elucidate how these patterns are reflected in the hard tissue record. By incorporating proxies accessible in past contexts to investigate a well-documented modern population, this work will also contribute to foundations for examining how environmental variability may have shaped the evolution of life history flexibility in the human lineage.