Wildlife Health, Ecology, and Conservation
With this reearch, we aim to answer critical yet simple questions including: “What is a healthy lemur/fosa?” and “How does the increased interactions with humans and their domestic animals affect the health of lemurs/fosa?”
A significant knowledge gap for many species of conservation concern is the lack of baseline health information. For many wild animal species in Madagascar, even basic measures such as blood cell counts and blood chemistry values remain unknown. Yet, these measurements are essential for addressing fundamental questions: What does a healthy wildlife look like? And how might increasing interactions with humans and domestic animals affect wildlife health?
Over the past decade, our work has helped advance field- and laboratory-based approaches for understanding wildlife health in Madagascar and investigating how pathogens move between species. In collaboration with researchers and conservation partners, we have established and maintained long-term field studies across several protected areas in Madagascar. These studies allow us to monitor the health of mammalian wildlife over time and across landscapes experiencing different levels of habitat degradation and human disturbance.
Some of our recent projects build on this foundation by exploring different aspects of wildlife health and ecology in Madagascar. We study the genetic diversity of lemurs and carnivores, investigate how fosa and other wildlife move through changing landscapes, and establish baseline physiological values that help us understand what healthy wildlife looks like. By combining fieldwork with genetic and molecular tools and movement tracking, we aim to better understand how Madagascar's unique wildlife responds to environmental change and increasing contact with people and domestic animals.
Recent publications on this theme include:
Rasambainarivo, F. T., Pomerantz, J., Rasolofoniaina, O.*, Rahajanirina, L. P., & Dollar, L. (2025). Physiological health benchmarks in free-ranging Fosa (Cryptoprocta ferox): establishing reference intervals to assess the impact of anthropogenic disturbance on an endemic apex predator. Journal of Mammalogy, gyaf063.
Rasambainarivo, F., Hinson, B., Rasolofoniaina, O*., Chelaghma, S., Junge, R. E., Metcalf, C. J. E., ... & Rice, B. (2025). Evolutionary history, longevity and terrestriality predict Toxoplasma gondii seroprevalence in free-ranging non-human primates. International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife, 101143.
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