News — Frank Cuozzo, UND assistant professor of anthropology, is known to pop in a favorite copy of the animated movie "Madagascar" from time to time during his classes in Babcock Hall.
You know, the tale about four zoo inmates " a lion, zebra, giraffe and hippo " who escape from their New York City confinement only to end up on a ship bound for Madagascar, where they run into a band of party-loving lemurs. Yes, that movie.
Oh, just ask your kids.
With a look that says "I'm serious even though you don't think I am," Cuozzo tells this writer that the classroom showings are purely educational.
"I tell the class, 'let's look at the way the movie portray lemurs. What did they get right and what did they get wrong,'"
He goes on, "for instance, in the movie, they have a character who is the 'King of the Lemurs, but that could never happen among lemurs because they are a female dominant species."
The movie serves as an effective learning tool on subjects that Cuozzo is passionate about: Madagascar and lemurs. In a twisted sort of way, the characters in the movie are a reflection of Cuozzo, a New Jersey native, who grew up only a taxi commute from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, a place he frequents regularly today even while serving as a UND professor.
Each year for the past six years, Cuozzo and a team of scientists have been traveling to a remote region of southern Madagascar, an island nation about the size of California and much of Oregon combined, to study the endangered ringtail lemurs that live on the Beza Mahafaly conservation reserve. The three-to-four-person Lemur Biology Project team spends between two and three months living in tents and buying sustenance off the local economy in one of most rural areas in 11th poorest country on the planet.
Just to get to the conservation reserve from Toliara, the provincial capital, a traveler would take a eight hours ride on a bus, a crudely configured flatbed truck with seats affixed with nails, followed by a six hours trek by oxcart.
"You are completely isolated," Cuozzo says. Madagascar is about 12,000 miles from Grand Forks.
Cuozzo and his colleagues are interested in threats to the local ringtail lemur population. What they've found is that overgrazing by cattle herds has decimated the supply of soft fruits and other palatable lemur delights outside of the conservation zone. This forces the lemurs high into the trees above the grassland to feed on the tough pods of the fruit from the tamarind tree. The change in diet has been too rapid for the lemurs' bodies to adapt, thus, causing intense tooth wear and severe oral infections that impact their overall health.
Scientists call these disproportionate effects on species caused by quick environmental changes "evolutionary disequilibrium."
Cuozzo has taken a page out of the old science handbook of dental ecology and applied it to his study on lemurs by using teeth as a marker of habitat degradation.
"It's kind of a new twist," he said. "We're showing you can use tooth wear in a new way. You can use dental decay as a marker for environmental changes."
Cuozzo, along with Michelle Sauther, from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Jacky Youssouf, a native Malagasy from the University of Tuleria, successfully convinced the local people and government to expand the lemur conservation zone from about 580 hectars to the current 4,000 hectars. They did this by going into nearby villages and towns and seeking the people's opinions on the lemur conservation project.
The two sides worked together to craft agreements that would allow the locals and the conservation zone to co-exist.
Their effort to expand the conservation reserve and the work they are doing with lemurs earned the project prestigious recognition over the summer from the International Primate Society Biannual Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Cuozzo concentrates on the lemurs impacts related to the lemurs' habitat, while Sauther is a health and behavior specialist. Youssouf is a doctoral students who serves as chief of research at the conservation reserve. The stateside anthropoligisrts keep in routine contact with Yousouf, as he monitors the lemurs year round.
"It has led to synergies that has helped us doing things that we would never be able to do ourselves," Cuozzo said.
The team picked up its newest member this year in UND undergraduate Jenifer Ness, a native of Bismarck. She made her first visit to Madagascar with the team following her final tests last spring.
Ness spent her time collecting scat samples from feral dogs and large wildcats, presumed predators of lemurs, and a direct, albeit, unnatural threat to the endangered animals. She painstakingly sifted through the samples, finding remnants of lemur parts. It allowed her to document a direct correlation between the nontraditional predators and a declining population of lemurs.
Cuozzo was impressed with his young pupil's dedication and professionalism as an undergraduate researcher in trying conditions.
"This has been an amazing opporutnity for her," Cuozzo said. "I wish I had had that kind of opportunity as an undergrad."
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