Alison Jolly obituary

Primatologist and conservationist famous for her work on the lemurs of MadagascarAs a postdoctoral student at Yale University in the early 60s, Alison Jolly pioneered in-depth field research on the behaviour and ecology of lemurs in Madagascar. Her life subsequently took her to Cambridge University, the New York Zoological Society, and the universities of Cambridge, Princeton, Rockefeller and Sussex. Throughout these travels, her abiding interest in big questions to which small lemurs might provide answers never wavered and, over the years, her insights transformed our understanding of the evolution of social behaviour.A steadfast champion of lemur conservation, Jolly, who has died aged 76, was also among the first to argue that conservation must recognise the needs of local people. She nurtured students, too, in Madagascar and beyond, and a whole generation of primatologists and conservation biologists came of age with her encouragement and support.Ideas first put forward by Jolly in the 1960s and 70s became part of the landscape of evolutionary biology and gave rise to an intellectual genealogy as wide as it is deep. In Lemur Behaviour (1966), she was the first to establish clearly from meticulously reported field observations the odd fact that among the lemurs she studied, females typically had priority over males, upending the longstanding assumption that male primates are always bigger, fiercer and dominant.In seminal articles following this work, Jolly explored the evol...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: theguardian.com Obituaries Madagascar Primatology Conservation Environment Science Source Type: news