Fall 2022 – I conducted fieldwork in Los Tuxtlas, Vercruz, Mexico. In collaboration with Dr. Pedro Dias at Universidad Veracruzana, I collected fecal gut microbial, inflammation, and glucocorticoid metabolite samples from mantled howler monkeys across ten different forest fragments.
The goal of my study is to determine what aspects of habitat degradation impact a host’s overall health. For each forest fragment I noted plant community density, composition, and richness, forest fragment size, dominant land use types in areas surrounding the fragments, and human prevalence within each fragment. Future analysis will assess which of these ecological attributes are associated with shifts in the gut microbiome, inflammation, and glucocorticoid metabolites between individual howlers. With the knowledge of which ecological attributes are impacting the howlers the most, I am better able to inform conservation management and planning.