Scientist at Work Blog: In Search of Slow Lorises

Mary E. Blair is a postdoctoral researcher in the American Museum of Natural History?s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, where she coordinates the Enhancing Diversity in Conservation Science Initiative.

March 12, 2013

When I left New York City this morning, it was a rainy, dreary day full of traffic and cars and concrete. What awaits me may be similarly soggy, but the traffic will be in the trees and on the forest floor as I explore the jungles of Vietnam at night.

I am at the beginning of my first expedition to Vietnam as a part of my postdoctoral research for the American Museum of Natural History. This expedition is jointly organized by the museum and the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies at Vietnam National University, Hanoi.

I study primates. And this time, I am searching for the pygmy and Bengal slow lorises.

Slow lorises are small nocturnal primates found in South and Southeast Asia. Little is known about their status or ecology in Vietnam. We do know the pygmy and Bengal species can be found here. We also know they are very hard to find, let alone study. These animals? lives are very cryptic, and their numbers are spread thinly throughout dense, intimidating terrain. But where they can be found, they are hunted. Slow lorises are showing up in local, regional and international trade as pets and for traditional medicine. Their appearance, dead and alive, on the black market is one unfortunate way we know their natural populations are declining.

So I am well aware that our expedition may be quite difficult. It will be especially challenging for me, as it will be my first time surveying for animals at night. I have a lot of experience conducting daytime surveys from my past fieldwork on squirrel monkeys in Costa Rica. If lorises are the near hermits of the jungle, squirrel monkeys are like teenagers at the foliage mall. They travel in groups of up to 60, and they are constantly chattering with one another, making it relatively easy to find them in a forest.

Surveying for slow lorises at night will be a very different and unique experience for me. I suppose as a New Yorker I am a bit nocturnal ? but walking around in a forest in Vietnam at night is going to be very different from walking around the Lower East Side. ?Luckily, my postdoctoral adviser, Eleanor Sterling, happens to have considerable experience searching for primates at night: She is considered one of the world?s experts on the aye-aye, a nocturnal lemur found only in Madagascar. She will be joining me and sharing her wisdom for the first of my three survey trips to nature reserves across Vietnam.

The main objective of our expedition will be to gather essential population data. Essentially, we will count slow lorises. More precisely, we will keep track of how often we encounter them while walking on trails or transects at night (more on that later). This work will help conservation managers to more effectively protect these species from further population decline.

I have never seen a slow loris in the wild, and as I write this post during my layover in Seoul, South Korea, I am trying to imagine what it will be like to see my first one. I can?t wait to tell you all about it.

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This expedition is financed by the Margot Marsh Biodiversity Foundation and the Eppley Foundation for Research.

Source: http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/in-search-of-slow-lorises/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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