Dr. Ammie Kalan
Assistant professor
Anthropology
- Status:
- Accepting MA/PhD Students
- Contact:
- Office: COR B213 akalan@uvic.ca 250-721-7058
- Credentials:
- University of Leipzig/IMPRS (Germany)
- Area of expertise:
- Biological anthropology, primate behavioural ecology, animal communication, animal cultures, tool use, wildlife conservation, bioacoustics, camera trapping
- Related links:
Bio
I am a field-based primatologist interested in the social and ecological drivers of behavioural flexibility in wild great apes, and what this can tell us about hominin evolution using a comparative perspective.
In particular, I research behavioural flexibility as it relates to the domains of communication, tool use, foraging ecology and nonhuman cultural traditions. I also seek to improve our understanding of the behavioural strategies primates use to adapt and survive in increasingly anthropogenic environments and under climate change.
To date, my research has focussed on wild populations of great apes across Africa, where I also work to improve remote methods for studying these animals in the field, such as passive acoustic monitoring and camera trapping. This research has led me to expand my interest in great apes to the behavioural ecology and conservation of other nonhuman primate species as well.
I currently collaborate with directors of multiple African great ape field sites and I remain an affiliated researcher with the Pan African Programme: the Cultured Chimpanzee (PanAf), as well as a Scientific Moderator of Chimp&See, the PanAf’s community science project. I encourage any prospective students or postgraduates to contact me directly after checking out my Great Ape Behaviour (GAB) Lab website.
Interests
- primate communication
- primate tool use
- animal culture
- bioacoustics
- camera trapping
- primate conservation
Courses
- ANTH 250 Biological Anthropology
- ANTH 252 Primates, People & Society (forthcoming)
- ANTH 350 Primate Behaviour & Conservation
- ANTH 450 Advanced Seminar in Primate Behaviour & Cognition
Current projects
Chimpanzee AST is rare among wild populations and may represent a new cultural behaviour found only in West Africa.
In collaboration with acoustic engineers (PRISM lab, CNRS & Aix-Marseille University) we showed that chimpanzees choose tree species that are optimal for sound production and therefore the behaviour appears important for communication.
Additional ongoing projects by GAB Lab members include 3D modeling of AST sites to describe and digitally preserve AST sites, spatial distribution of AST sites, and investigating archaeological signatures of AST (in collaboration with Lydia Luncz, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology).
I am also interested in the kinematics of chimpanzee throwing and comparing this to other hominids, both living and extinct. My research on chimpanzee AST is made possible with the continued support of Chimbo, an NGO based in Boé, Guinea-Bissau.
Leopards are one of the most abundant natural predators for all primates, big and small, across Africa but we know little about their direct effects on primate behaviour despite predation being considered one of the major selection pressures driving primate evolution.
I am currently leading a mini-project on Chimp&See to identify individual leopards caught on camera traps to obtain precise densities across all PanAf sites, where we aim to investigate whether leopard abundance affects primate species diversity as well as their spatio-temporal activity patterns and behaviour.
Selected publications
- Kalan, AK; Nakano, R and Warshawski, L. (2023). What we know and don’t know about great ape cultural communication. American Journal of Primatology. (Top 10 Most Downloaded Papers of 2023)
- Hansen, M; Kalan, AK; Riley, E; Waters, S. (2022). Evaluating the need to habituate: modern approaches to field primatology during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Primate Conservation. 36.
- Anders, F; Kalan, AK; Kühl, H; Fuchs, M. (2021). Compensating class imbalance for acoustic chimpanzee detection with convolutional recurrent neural networks. Ecological Informatics. 65: 101423.
- Kalan AK, Kulik L, Arandjelovic M, et al. (2020). Environmental variability supports chimpanzee behavioral diversity. Nature Communications.
- Boesch C, Kalan AK,Mundry R, et al. (2020). Chimpanzee ethnography reveals unexpected cultural diversity. Nature Human Behaviour 4: 910-916.
- Kalan AK, Carmignani E, Kronland-Martinet R, Ystad S, Aramaki M. (2019). Chimpanzees use trees with a resonant timbre for accumulative stone throwing. Biology Letters 15 (12), 20190747.
- Kühl HS, Boesch C, Kulik L, .…(77 authors), Kalan AK (2019). Human disturbance erodes chimpanzee behavioral diversity. Science 363: 1453-1455.
- Kalan AK, Hohmann G, Arandjelovic M, et al. (2019). Novelty response of wild African apes to camera-traps. Current Biology 29: 1211-1217.
- Kalan, A. K. 2023. A comparative multimodal perspective on the evolutionary origins of tool use and handedness, ed. by F. A. Karakostis, G. Jäger, pp. 123–142. Tübingen: Kerns Verlag. ISBN: 978-3-935751-38-4.
- Kalan A.K. 2019. Evidence for sexual dimorphism in chimpanzee vocalizations: A comparison of male and female call production and acoustic parameters. In: Celebrating 40 Years of Research at the Taï Chimpanzee Project. Pgs. 410-421. Eds. Boesch C, Wittig R, Crockford C, Vigilant L, Deschner T & Leendertz F.