Université de Fribourg

First quantitative survey delineates the distribution of chimpanzees in the Eastern Central African Republic

Aebischer, Thierry ; Siguindo, Guy ; Rochat, Estelle ; Arandjelovic, Mimi ; Heilman, Amy ; Hickisch, Raffael ; Vigilant, Linda ; Joost, Stéphane ; Wegmann, Daniel

In: Biological Conservation, 2017, vol. 213, no. Part A, p. 84–94

Vast, pristine ecosystems and their biodiversity are vanishing globally at frightening speed, but many large tracts of wilderness have not yet been systematically inventoried and important natural populations of threatened species remain poorly characterized. The forest-savanna ecotone of the Eastern Central African Republic (CAR) is one such poorly studied area. Using camera traps, transect...

Université de Fribourg

Historical sampling reveals dramatic demographic changes in western gorilla populations

Thalmann, Olaf ; Wegmann, Daniel ; Spitzner, Marie ; Arandjelovic, Mimi ; Guschanski, Katerina ; Leuenberger, Christoph ; Bergl, Richard A ; Vigilant, Linda

In: BMC Evolutionary Biology, 2011, vol. 11, p. 85

Background: Today many large mammals live in small, fragmented populations, but it is often unclear whether this subdivision is the result of long-term or recent events. Demographic modeling using genetic data can estimate changes in long-term population sizes while temporal sampling provides a way to compare genetic variation present today with that sampled in the past. In order to better...