Jessica Rothman
CUNY Hunter College, NY·Ecology & Evolution
Good nutrition is essential for growth, reproduction, immune function and disease prevention. Yet the foods available to an animal can change sharply from one place to another.
- Fields
Ecology & Evolution
Biology
Microbiology & Immunology
- Topics
primate ecology
nutritional ecology
redtail monkeys
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Sep 2027
What they work on
- Measure how the diet and nutrient intake of wild redtail monkeys differ across three Ugandan forests with very different plant composition, using behavioral observations and nutritional analysis of the foods eaten.
- Determine how flexible redtail monkeys are in food choice and nutrient balance. Test whether they eat foods with similar nutrient profiles, target specific foods, or tolerate unbalanced diets.
- Test whether variation in redtail monkey diet and nutrition correlates with the composition of the gut microbiome, the bacteria that help digest food, using bioinformatic microbiome analysis.
- Compare current primate feeding patterns, tree leaf nutritional chemistry and food density in Kibale National Park with long-term data sets, through student projects guided by Uganda Wildlife Authority staff.
- Examine how ecotourism affects chimpanzee ecology and behavior, and how invasive and exotic shrubs alter plant community diversity and the primate food supply in Kibale National Park.
More about the research
How do animals that eat many kinds of food still get the nutrients they need? This work studies the question in wild primates in Ugandan rainforests. It combines observations of feeding behavior, the nutritional chemistry of foods, and the gut bacteria that help digest them. A second, training-focused project connects this nutrition research to practical conservation of primates facing global change.
Why it matters
Monkeys and apes grow slowly, live long and reproduce at modest rates. That makes them especially vulnerable to global change, even inside protected national parks. This work examines how flexibly monkeys meet their nutritional needs across different forests, and how leaf chemistry, ecotourism and invasive shrubs affect primate food and behavior. The results could help managers such as the Uganda Wildlife Authority build evidence into conservation plans for Kibale's monkeys and chimpanzees.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jonathan Myers
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Ecology & Evolution
Determine how leaf secondary chemistry, the defense compounds that are not needed for basic growth, shapes local interactions among neighboring trees, by combining leaf metabolomics with growth and survival data from mapped forest plots.
Susan Kalisz
University of Tennessee-Knoxville, TN·Ecology & Evolution
Determine long-term patterns in arbuscular mycorrhizal and pathogenic fungal communities on native plant roots, and how invasion by garlic mustard (Alliaria petiolata) reorganizes them, using a long-term field invasion experiment.
James Belthoff
Boise State University, ID·Ecology & Evolution
Examine how weather and wind conditions, shaped by a changing climate and ocean conditions, affect migrating raptors' decisions to start migration, the route and pace of travel, and survival.
The school
CUNY Hunter College: 2 labs on PI Pages, $45M a year on research, 5 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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