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Elizabeth V. Lonsdorf, Ph.D.
As the director of Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes, Lonsdorf coordinates the zoo’s support of and participation in wild animal conservation initiatives. She continues to study tool-use in chimpanzees in the wild and at the Regenstein Center for African Apes as part of the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes. She is also conducting field research on ecosystem health issues in the Gombe chimpanzees. Lonsdorf is the in-situ adviser to American Zoo and Aquarium Association’s (AZA) Chimpanzee Species Survival Plan and a member of AZA’s Field Conservation Committee. She serves on the Section on Great Apes of the IUCN’s Primate Specialist Group and is a member of the Committee of Evolutionary Biology faculty of the University of Chicago. Publications Lonsdorf, E.V. 2007. The Role of Behavioral Research in the Conservation of Chimpanzees and Gorillas. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 10(1): 71-78. Ross, S.R., Lonsdorf, E.V. and Stoinski, T.S. 2007. Assessing the welfare implications of visitors in a zoo setting: A comment on Wells (2005). Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 102: 130-133. Lonsdorf, E.V. 2006. The role of the mother in the acquisition of tool-use skills in wild chimpanzees. Animal Cognition, 9: 36-46. Lonsdorf, E.V., Travis, D., Pusey, A.E. and Goodall, J. 2006. Using retrospective health data from the Gombe chimpanzee study to inform future monitoring efforts. American Journal of Primatology: Special Topics Issue on Disease Risk Analysis, 68: 897-908. Lonsdorf, E.V. 2005. Sex differences in the development of termite-fishing skills in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) of Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Animal Behaviour, 70: 673-683. Lonsdorf, E.V. and Hopkins, W.D. 2005. Wild chimpanzees show population-level handedness for tool use. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 102: 12634-12638. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0505806102.
Lonsdorf, E.V., Pusey, A.E. and Eberly, L. 2004.
Sex differences in learning in chimpanzees
Nature, 428: 715-716. Goodall, J. and Lonsdorf, E.V. 2002. Cultures in Chimpanzees. Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of Evolution. |
Elizabeth Lonsdorf graduated from Duke University in 1996 and received
her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 2003. As an undergraduate,
Lonsdorf did research at the Duke University Primate Center on foraging
skills of the highly endangered aye-aye. An interest in marine
mammals led to research assistantships at the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal
Laboratory in Honolulu, Hawaii and at Walt Disney World’s EPCOT
Center. Her graduate work at Minnesota, under the auspices of the Jane
Goodall Institute’s Center for Primate Studies, centered on young
chimpanzee development and focused on the acquisition of foraging skills. As
part of her research, Lonsdorf spent several months per year studying
wild chimpanzees at Gombe National Park in Tanzania.