PSGB Winter Meeting
The Primate Society of Great Britain is happy to announce that our next meeting will be held at Bristol Zoo Gardens! We're back again in Bristol on Thursday 12th & Friday 13th of December 2024. Thank you to Bristol Zoological Society for giving us the amazing opportunity to visit their historic site in Clifton and share in two days of remarkable primatological expertise! Doors open 10:00am Thursday.
This year’s theme will be based around “New directions in Primatology”. Deciding on a theme for this meeting we aimed to align with BZS’s mission in opening conversations on how we move the field of primatology forward and battle current challenges. If you have any thoughts on what this theme means to you, we’d love to hear it! You can get in touch with [email protected].
Getting Here
The PSGB meeting will be held at: Conservation Education Centre, Guthrie Rd, Clifton, Bristol BS8 3EZ. Look for the green ‘Conservation Education Centre’ sign on Guthrie Road. What three words ///facing.rental.scout
By Car
Clifton Down shopping Centre Car Park is the closest large car park to the venue and only a ten-minute stroll, past Clifton Suspension Bridge, to the Conservation Education Centre. Car Park closes at 10:30pm and costs £12.00 to park all day. There is no free parking at this site. However, there is free parking on Ladies Mile on the Downs opposite Bristol Zoo Gardens for 5 hours each day, and paid road parking around the site.
By Train
The best way to reach the zoo via rail is to take the local train to Clifton Down station and the ten-minute stroll, past Clifton Suspension Bridge, to the zoo. From Bristol Temple Meads station, which has regular national connections, take the 8 or 9 bus service straight to the zoo’s main entrance.
Suggested Accommodation
Clifton hotels have a number of hotels in the city and close to the venue, they have provided us with a special discount code of 20% off with code - Primate20% https://cliftonhotels.com
Welcoming our Osman Hill Memorial Winner, Dr Anna Nekaris
Dr Anna Nekaris is a Professor in Ecology, Conservation and Environment at Anglia Ruskin University. She started her work on nocturnal primates in 1992, when she attended the Creatures of the Dark – the Nocturnal Prosimians – at the then Duke University Primate Centre. Here she met several experts who sent her on her path to study the nocturnal lorises. She went on to receive her PhD at Washington University in St Louis in 2000. For 23 years, Anna was the Subject Coordinator for the MSc in Primate Conservation at Oxford Brookes University. In 2011, she started the Little Fireface Project – a conservation project based in Java, Indonesia, but supporting loris conservation throughout their range. She is also Vice Chair of the recently formed IUCN Special Section for African and Asian Prosimians, Co-editor-in-chief of Folia Primatologica, and Section Editor of Nature’s Discover Conservation. In early 2024, Anna received the great honour from His Majesty King Charles the III, being appointed to the title of Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her services to conservation.
Anna’s studies cover all species of slow, pygmy and slender lorises, including five she named or elevated from subspecies, and one genus that she named. Anna’s research ranges from behavioural ecology in zoos, rescue centres and in the wild (including a novel study on slow loris venom), museum studies, genetics, acoustics, taxonomy, conservation education, and community conservation especially with agroforestry farmers. She has published more than 300 scientific papers and 10 edited volumes; she has supervised 9 postdoctoral research students and 31 PhD and 126 MSc students to completion. Anna has a world-wide association with rescue centres, field stations, and zoos with need of advice regarding lorises. Anna’s advice has also been sought when an illegal YouTube video of a pet loris, which violated international legislation, became viral reaching over 12 million hits. Through her work and advocacy, in 2007, lorises became protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species. After this, Anna campaigned on over 800 radio stations and television programmes to urge YouTube to remove this illegal video. She later worked with the Japanese government to change laws regarding microchipping of CITES I protected species. Her work on this topic has appeared in international arenas, including Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, National Geographic, and a major documentary on BBC2.
Anna hopes her research will convince people that lorises do not make good pets. They are wild animals. All species of loris are threatened with extinction. Some are amongst the rarest primates on the planet. It is her hope that they can remain in the forest for as long as possible so we can learn more about these most unique primates.
Anna will be delivering a talk on "The myth of the solitary primate: using new technology to dispel an old misconception".
Announcing our Napier Award Medal Winner!
Please join us in welcoming our first plenary speaker and Napier Award Medal winner, Dr Louise Loyant! Dr Loyant will be joining us on the second day of the conference (Friday 13th December), to deliver her talk titled "Inhibitory control in macaque species: validation of a task battery, individual differences in performance and effect of social tolerance".
Dr. Loyant is a veterinarian with a PhD in primate behaviour. Her passion for animal behaviour began during her vet studies in France, Toulouse. Parallel to her vet formation, she completed extra modules on zoopathology, neuroscience and animal behaviour. In her third year at vet school, she won the travel grant « Merial Veterinary Scholar Program », which allowed her to study the developmental neuro-toxicity of Chlorpyrifos on rats, at the Mississippi State University, USA. For her last year, she completed a master’s degree in Neuroscience, animal behaviour and cognition. Louise has always been fascinated by primate behaviour, her master’s thesis titled "The implication of visual processing in social recognition of titi monkeys using MRI, PET-scans and eye tracking" which was completed at the California Primate Research Center, USA. Afterwards, she was granted with the Faculty Fully Funded PhD Bursary at the University of Portsmouth to study "Inhibitory control and social tolerance in macaques species" with Dr Marine Joly, Dr Jérôme Micheletta and Prof Bridget Waller. In 2019, during her PhD she was awarded with the International Primatological Society Research Grant, the Primate Society of Great Britain Research Grant and the Kyoto travel Bursary for the Student International Symposium of Animal Behaviour. Whilst completing her PhD she published three papers and a review (in revision) and participated to the Many Primates Project (Animal Behaviour and Cognition 2022). Since finishing her PhD, she has worked as as an animal welfare expert in several zoos in France and in the Netherlands. In these roles, she provided scientific expertise to improve animal well-being in captivity. She now works as a part time veterinarian and part time teacher of veterinary classes. Among others, one of her current research projects will embed the development of smart applications to study the behaviour, health and environment of indoor cats to propose concrete solutions and improve their welfare.
Have you thought about organising a PSGB meeting?
Please get in contact if you or your organisation would like to host the next PSGB meeting!
Organising a meeting will not only help PSGB, but will also provide you with opportunities to create a partially themed meeting that may have a particular bearing on your own work, or to invite speakers who have inspired your own research. It is also fun! You do not need to have a PhD; postgraduate students are just as welcome. Showing you have organised a scientific meeting will looks great on your CV.
We have guidelines that can help you plan and structure your meeting and a team of experienced people who can provide you with advice.
If you would like organise a future meeting (summer or winter), please contact our Meetings Officer, Shannon Farrington ([email protected]) to talk about what is involved or to be inspired by past programmes from past meetings.
