Loango Chimpanzee Project

This study site was established in 2005 in Loango National Park, Gabon. The Loango community is bordered by 5 other chimpanzee communities. The area consists of a mosaic of rivers, swamps, coastal forests, mangroves, savannahs, and secondary and mature forests. Temperatures range between 18 and 32 °C, with the mean minimum and maximum temperatures being 22.7 °C and 27.8 °C, respectively. There is a long rainy season between October and April, interrupted by a short dry season between December and January. The long dry season usually lasts from May to September (Head et al. 2011).

Examination of water availability and social change

To examine how impacts of water availability impact chimpanzee behaviour, I will need to examine how social behaviour varies with seasonality, particularly in western communities where seasonality is more pronounced and drought risk is particularly high under current emissions pathways (Fongoli, Loango & Taï). If water availability drives long term changes in internal group dynamics, these sites will be the best places to examine these changes.
To project water availability in the future, I will need to examine weather variations in multiple western field sites over time and see which easily measurable environmental conditions correlate with lower water availability (e.g maximum daily temperature, minimum daily temperature, number of consecutive hours over 40°C, etc.). Then using projections of climate change under various emissions pathways, examine how these will impact the number of water sources in these communities to predict when changes to social structures will start to be observed. 
As warming is particularly pronounced in the tropics, I will also examine from long term behavioural datasets at Taï, Bossou, 

Examination of food availability

Data on food availability, predictability and seasonality from multiple field sites will be necessary to examine whether the adaptive social strategies observed in response to extreme temperatures and drought are seen under periods of limited food availability. 

Changes to intergroup conflict as a result of climate change

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