Larissa Swedell
Visiting Fulbright Professor, Dept of Archaeology, University of Cape Town.
Associate Professor, Dept of Anthropology, Queens College-CUNY.
I am a primatologist whose research has focused on the behaviour and ecology of baboons since 1995. I am an Associate Professor at Queens College of the City University of New York and am currently a Visiting Fulbright Professor at the University of Cape Town.
Most broadly, my research interests include social behaviour, socioecology, and reproductive strategies in baboons and other primates. Most of my previous work has focused on the behaviour and ecology of a population of hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas hamadryas) in Ethiopia as part of another baboon research group, the Filoha Hamadryas Project. In collaboration with Julian Saunders, I am currently expanding my research to include chacma baboons (Papio hamadryas ursinus).
We arrived in Cape Town in 2006 with a plan to begin a comparative project focusing on reproductive strategies of chacma baboons in the Western Cape of South Africa. In discussions with Justin O'Riain at UCT, it became apparent that there was much to be learned from – and much to contribute to – the Cape Peninsula baboon population. Not only does this population possess unique features that make it a fascinating point of comparison with other baboons, but the escalating conflict between baboons and humans in the Cape Peninsula is in critical need of input from trained primatologists. Upon realizing this, we decided to formalize a baboon research group that has become known as the Cape Peninsula Baboon Research Unit (BRU).
Currently, I am supervising a project being conducted by UCT B.Sc. honours student Jacqui Stephenson on self-directed behaviour of females in the southern-most troop on the Cape Peninsula, the ‘Cape Point’ troop. I am developing additional projects on other Cape Peninsula troops, all in collaboration with Julian Saunders, on female association patterns, the impact of skewed sex ratio on male and female reproductive strategies, and behavioural flexibility in baboons.
