As an evolutionary behavioural ecologist, my research aims to understand how differences in the social environment that individuals encounter in early life and adulthood affect developmental and phenotypic outcomes, as well as long-term fitness, in nonhuman primates. I address those questions using observational and experimental data from long-term individual-based studies in natural populations, as well as cutting-edge, high throughput microbiology sequencing techniques to investigate the microbial mechanisms underpinning the link between sociality and fitness.
Since 2023, I co-direct the Mandrillus Project (https://projetmandrillus.weebly.com/), a long-term field site that studies a natural population of habituated mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx) in the Lékédi park in Southern Gabon. I am currently studying how host-associated microbial communities relate to variation in host parasitism, health and longevity in mandrills. I use a diverse set of methods, including techniques from behavioral ecology, microbiology, disease ecology and immunology.