Michelle Sauther

Professor Sauther’s major focus of research is to better understand how both immediate and long-term environmental factors interact with inter-individual variation to affect primate behavior and biology. In essence, she is very interested in how primates “negotiate” living within a variety of environments. Her current research focuses on understanding how environmental stressors such as anthropogenic-induced factors and climate impact both the biology and behavior of wild primates. Her research combines both field work and collaborative laboratory work with geneticists, research veterinarians and others to assess biological markers of ecological stress that includes biometrics, genetics, physiological and health measures. From 2003-2013 her project on wild ring-tailed lemurs documented how both immediate and long term environmental factors, such as climate and anthropogenic change affect Malagasy primate behavior and biology. In 2013 she developed a new project focusing on South Africa's nocturnal primates, Otolemur crassicaudatus and Galago moholi at the Lajuma Research Centre, South Africa. This project collects data on the health and conservation biology of these two species, including population and conservation genetics and disease ecology. Her research is extremely relevant to on-going work on the effects of climate and habitat change on the world’s endangered animals and how primates adapt to such changes. She is the author of over 81 articles and book chapters and has received numerous research grants from the National Science Foundation and other funding agencies.