Status and effectiveness of wildlife conservation

 In northern Tanzania we have established a systematic wildlife population monitoring scheme which -sometimes in combination with additional experiments- allows us to answer the following questions:

• How are different paramters of wildlife populations (physiology, demography, behaviour, population density) affected by conservation and different human activities?
• What are the key threats to wildlife persistence?
• What are direct and indirect effects of species extinctions?
• How to ensure functional connectivity in fragmented landscapes?

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Key collaborators in this project are: Dr. J. Kioko & Dr. B. Kissui (The School for Field Studies), Dr. D. Lee & M. Bond (Wild Nature Institute), Jason Riggio (UC Davis), Dr. H. Prins (Wageningen University)

Funded by: The School For Field Studies, www.Experiment.com

Human-wildlife co-existence in agricultural landscapes

Where wildlife and humans co-exist, conflict over resources arises and may affect both human livelihoods and animal populations.  This project is closely tied to the project "Status and effectiveness of wildlife conservation". To enable sustainable co-existence we work on: 

• Assessing  perceptions of local people towards wildlife i norder to find predictors of tolerance towards wildlife species
• Predicting the occurence of wildlife related damages in space and time
• Implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of damage prevention methods (focussing on crop damages by elephants and livestock depredation by large carnivores). 

​​​In this project, I collaborate with  multiple researchers, including Dr. H. König (Leibniz-Zentrum für Agrarlandschaftsforschung). 

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Funded by: The School For Field Studies, PAMS Foundation, GIZ

Mixed species herds in large East African Mammals 

We are interested in the patterns and mechanisms of mixed species groups in large mammal communities of East Africa and analyse:

• Spatio-temporal patterns of mixed species herds
• Behavioral variation of individuals in mixed- and single species herds
• Behavioral responses of prey species in single- and mixed species groups subject to variable predation pressure

I collaborate with Prof. S. Krause (University of Applied Sciences Lübeck) and Diana Lakeland (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen).

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​Funded by: ​The School For Field Studies, Auslandsbafoeg 

Patterns and consequences of human hunting strategies

Using a comaprative approach and combining GPS tracking of hunters, information on hunting success, interviews and spatial-explicit models of prey distribution we:   

• compare prey preferences of hadza hunter gatherers with those of 'modern' bushmeat hunters
• test if hunter gatherers hunt according to predictions of optimal foraging theory

I closely collaborate with Brian Wood (UC LA; Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and UC LA) and the Hadza community of Yaeda Valley.
 
Funded by: The School For Field Studies, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Zoonotic disease ecology

Focussing on ectoparasites (mainly ticks and fleas) parasitizing mammals, we investigate:

• environmental, community-, population- and individual-level correlates of ectoparasitism
• cascading effects of megaherbivore losses on tick popualtions and tick antagonists
• effectiveness of tick control management 

 I have collaborated with Dr. B. Krasnov (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel) on ectoparasitism in small mammals and run field projects in Manyara Ranch.

Funded by: The School for Field Studies

Knowledge, attitudes & practices about zoonotic diseases

Focussing on the main zoonotic diseases of public health concern in Northern Tanzania (anthrax, bovine tuberculosis, brucellosis, rabies), we focus on:

• evaluating local knowledge regarding these diseases 
• assessing attitudes and risk perceptions of these diseases
• documenting local practices to identify risk factors among rural populations in northern Tanzani

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​ Funded by: The School For Field Studies