Achievement

Trainee Heidi Bissell is studying the nutritional ecology of the endangered black-and-white snub-nosed monkey in Yunnan Province, China. Last year she completed six digestibility trials with captive monkeys in China, examining the digestibility of lichen, a staple of the monkeys' wild diet. One species of lichen that the monkeys commonly consumed is 88% digestible. However, there are potentially toxic secondary compounds in the lichen that, according to current climate predictions, are likely increase in the future. Currently she is looking at the influence of lichen secondary compounds on microbial fermentation and developing laboratory techniques to non-invasively estimate digestibility.