Between 150,000 and 300,000 chimpanzees survive in the wild, living in mostly unprotected forested or partially forested habitats distributed discontinuously across equatorial Africa. Interdisciplinary research is being conducted at a growing number of locations, primarily in areas enjoying some level of legal protection. Well-funded projects are able to staff field stations year-round to continuously collect ecological, demographic, and behavioral data and maintain digital databases to which project leaders, visiting scientists, students, and local field assistants alike contribute. The emergence of digital technologies has also facilitated collaborative analyses among different field projects, substantially enlarging our ability to explore the extent and significance of variation in chimpanzee behavior across their geographical range. Long-term projects generate critical information and support for conservation initiatives and can be instrumental in elevating and maintaining the protected status of the forests in which chimpanzees are located.

BRIEF FIELD SITE DESCRIPTIONS

The locations of the seven field studies that have generated the most detailed information about wild chimpanzee social behavior are shown in Figure 2.1. Each of these projects has amassed decades-long records of socioecological data for populations in which individual identities are known and genealogical relationships have been tracked for generations. The following sections provide brief overviews of the establishment, general scientific focus, habitat characteristics, and chimpanzee population status of each project. Most of these projects maintain websites at which full lists of published research may be found along with information about conservation and education activities. The field sites are presented in the order in which they were established chronologically.

Gombe Stream Research Center (Gombe National Park, Tanzania)

Jane Goodall initiated her pioneering study of chimpanzees in what is now Gombe National Park, on the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika, in 1960. A series of televised National Geographic Society productions featuring her early research dramatized discoveries of close family relationships, tool use, and hunting, and brought chimpanzees into the public eye. Tanzanian field assistants and a steady stream of university researchers have been collecting information at Gombe ever since. More than five decades of data are now managed by the Jane Goodall Institute Research Center at Duke University, providing a critical resource for examining the ecological status of the Gombe chimpanzees and the evolutionary significance of a wide range of chimpanzee behaviors.