The Simien Mountains Gelada Research Project is an interdisciplinary group of researchers (led by Drs. Thore Bergman, Amy Lu, Noah Snyder-Mackler, and India Schneider-Crease), who have been studying a wild population of geladas (Theropithecus gelada) in the Simien Mountains National Park, Ethiopia since Drs. Jacinta Beehner and Thore Bergman founded the project in late 2005. We aim to answer questions about what ecological and evolutionary drivers make geladas unique among primates in so many ways: why are geladas the last remaining species of their genus (Theropithecus)? Why do they live in groups that are an order of magnitude larger than almost every other primate? What function does the “bleeding heart” (red patch on their neck and chest) serve? How do they survive at high altitude and on an exclusively graminivorous diet?

We answer these questions and others about the evolution of sociality and its cognitive processes, the intersection between ecology and patterns of disease, the relationship between hormones and fitness, and genomic adaptations in a long-lived wild primate by combining detailed behavioral observations on a population of ~300 known (and named!) individual monkeys with cutting-edge techniques in genomics, endocrinology, and immunology to better understand the links between an animal’s physiology and its behavior, longevity, and reproductive success. Check out this page to read more about our research.

The Simien Mountains Gelada Research Project is collaboration between the University of Michigan, Stony Brook University, Arizona State University, and the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Authority.