Mitchell Irwin, a Ph.D. student in the Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropological Sciences, recently won the award for the "best oral paper" at the 28th annual meeting of the American Society of Primatologists (ASP) in Portland, Oregon. Irwin presented a subset of his dissertation research investigating the effects of forest fragmentation on native primate populations in eastern Madagascar.

The presentation, entitled "Living in Forest Fragments Reduces Group Cohesion in Diademed Sifakas (Propithecus diadema) in Eastern Madagascar, by Reducing Patch Size of Food Resources", summarized Irwin's year-long research study of wild lemur groups in Madagascar. Specifically, he found that the preferred resources in pristine forest disappear when forest is fragmented. As a consequence, the lemurs shift to less-preferred foods. One consequence of this shift is that the cohesion of social groups is greatly reduced, leaving the animals more vulnerable to outside threats like predation.

"It was my hope that this research project would be both academically interesting, and useful for conservation purposes," Irwin said. "It's great from the point of view of understanding animal behavior and socioecology to learn what makes them do what they do, but it's even better if that knowledge can help us in efforts to conserve their last remaining populations. Understanding exactly how forests fragmentation threatens primates will help us fight for their survival."

The ASP Student Prize Awards are awarded annually by the Society's Education Committee for oral paper and poster paper presentations. Oral papers are rated according to design, originality, and significance of the research as well as organization, delivery, and visual aids of the presentation.