Colin Chapman | Kibale Ecology and Conservation Project

Food Resource Landscapes

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Project Aim

Many aspects of animal behavior and life histories are have been associated to the spatial and temporal distribution of food resources. For example, in primates and other animals, the spatial concentration (clumpedness) of foods impacts competitive regimes and social structure, while seasonality of foods influences reproductive timing. Past research often relied on coarse dietary categories (e.g., leaves vs. fruit). Therefore, our goal is to develop finer-grained maps of food resource distributions to test socioecological and life-history hypotheses.

Analyses of plant phenology and distribution data from Kibale reveal strong interspecific variation in the timing and spatial patterning of leaf and fruit production. To obtain more information about this variability, we are integrating drone imagery and machine-learning classifications with long-term phenological and nutritional datasets to build dynamic, high-resolution food-resource landscapes for Kibale National Park. We will use these landscapes to quantify the spatiotemporal distribution of plant foods (e.g., seasonality, predictability, clumpedness) and to test research hypotheses about the behavior and life-histories of primates and other animal in Kibale.

For additional habitats, we aim to develop scalable, satellite-based methods to estimate canopy structure and validate them against the Kibale resource maps. Where local phenology datasets exist at other sites, we will integrate those datasets. For sites without such datasets, we will estimate fruit and leaf production from satellite time series calibrated with Kibale-based models. The outputs will be site-level estimates of clumpedness, predictability, and seasonality for key food resources.

Contact Information

Urs Kalbitzer

Forest Ecology and Restoration

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Project Aim

We have been studying the dynamics of the tree community in Kibale for over 35 years by monitoring 50 plots ever 3-5 years. This has provided key insights into the functioning of the forest and is now allowing us to restore areas of forest that were degraded by logging or agricultural encroachment before Kibale became a park. We work with the community to remove invasive or hyper-aggressive species and plant in native seedlings grown in nurseries.

Contact Information

Colin Chapman and Dipto Sarkar

Human-Wildlife Interactions

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Project Description and Aims

Human-wildlife conflict is one of the most pressing and complex challenges at the intersection of conservation biology and sustainable development. As human populations and agricultural lands expand into areas bordering protected habitats, interactions between people and wildlife are intensifying, often with severe consequences. Our research program addresses one of the most critical forms of this challenge: human-elephant conflict (HEC). Across Africa and Asia, crop-raiding by elephants poses a direct threat to the food security, economic stability, and safety of rural communities, which in turn can erode local support for conservation and lead to retaliatory killings of elephants.

The core aim of this long-term research is to move beyond simply documenting conflict to systematically understanding its underlying drivers. We operate on the premise that conflict events are not random; they are predictable behaviors shaped by a complex interplay of elephant ecology, animal learning, resource availability, and the structure of human landscapes. Our lab uses an interdisciplinary approach that integrates advanced geospatial science—including satellite remote sensing, GIS modeling, and spatial statistics—with rich, long-term datasets gathered through on-the-ground behavioral observations and collaboration with local community partners.

This project seeks to answer the fundamental questions of why and where conflict hotspots emerge and persist. We investigate how elephant decision-making is influenced by factors like landscape connectivity, the distribution and nutritional quality of preferred crops, the presence and effectiveness of physical barriers, and seasonal environmental changes. By identifying the specific landscape features and social-ecological dynamics that either attract elephants or fail to deter them, we can pinpoint critical vulnerabilities and opportunities for intervention.

Ultimately, the objective of this program is to provide the actionable, evidence-based science needed for effective, spatially-informed coexistence strategies. Rather than promoting one-size-fits-all solutions, our research helps conservation managers and local communities allocate limited resources to the right places. This can inform the design of smarter, more efficient mitigation tools, from the strategic reinforcement of barrier systems and the implementation of community-based early-warning systems in high-risk corridors, to informing land-use planning that better balances agricultural needs with wildlife movement. Our work strives to find sustainable pathways that protect human livelihoods while securing a future for elephant populations in increasingly human-dominated landscapes.

Contact Information

Dipto Sarkar

Primate and Mammal Population Dynamics.

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Project Description and Aims

The vast majority of conservation projects do not measure how they improve biodiversity. We want Kibale to be different. Thus, we are monitoring the relative abundance of the common diurnal primates, ungulates, and elephants throughout the park. Some of our monitoring builds on the work of others and starts in 1970 making our data some of the longest in existence for tropical systems. Park wide animal populations are generally increasing – a very positive message for conservation.

Contact Information

Colin Chapman, Dipto Sarkar, Jan Gogarten, Patrick Omeja, Urs Kalbitzer

Primate Ecology and Behavior

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Project Desciption and Aims

Nonhuman primates’ social and dietary diversity make them ideal for testing socioecological hypotheses. Kibale National Park is exceptional in this regard, with 13 primate species spanning diverse diets, group sizes and dynamics, social structures, mating systems, movement patterns, and other behavioral dimensions. Within this context, we investigate the causes and consequences of behavioral variation, with an emphasis on the folivorous Ugandan red colobus (Piliocolobus tephrosceles).

Current projects, drawing on more than a decade of data, examine context-dependent dietary preferences (using tree phenology and distribution), social relationships, and ranging. Ongoing work integrates high-resolution food-resource maps with behavioral observations and GPS-collar data to link food distribution to social dynamics, activity budgets, and movement.

Contact Information

Urs Kalbitzer, Colin Chapman, Martin Golooba

Colin Chapman

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Colin Chapman received his joint Ph.D. in the Departments of Anthropology and Zoology at the University of Alberta, then did post-docs at McGill and Harvard Universities. Since 1990 he has served as an Honourary lecturer in the Department of Zoology at Makerere University. Colin also served as a faculty member in Zoology at the University of Florida for 11 years and returned to McGill in 2004 where he held a Canada Research Chair Tier 1 position in Primate Ecology and Conservation. He is a Killam Research Fellow and a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2018 he was awarded the Konrad Adenauer Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and an Office of an Academician, Northwest University, Xi’an, China. In 2019 he took up a position at George Washington University to allow more time for conservation efforts and in 2022 he shifted to Vancouver Island University to be closer to nature and to allow him to devote more time to being a board member of African Wildlife Foundation and a scientific advisor to the Uganda Wildlife Foundation.

For the last 34+ years, Dr. Chapman has conducted research in Kibale National Park, Uganda concentrating on understanding the roles of disease, nutrition, and stress in determining primate abundance and how best to conserve the world’s biodiversity. During this time, he has not just been an academic, but has devoted great effort to help the rural communities, establishing schools, clinics, a mobile clinic, and ecotourism projects focused on chimpanzees and crater lakes. His efforts with respect to the union of the provision of health care and conservation resulted in him being awarded the Velan Foundation Awardee for Humanitarian Service in 2017.