Summer research at the DLC

My master’s thesis project is on color vision in ruffed lemurs (Varecia spp.). I am currently conducting my research at the Duke Lemur Center in Durham, North Carolina, where I am in the process of training and running behavioral trials. Using multi-field approaches, I am trying to answer my research questions by incorporating computer programming, robotics, psychophysics, and animal training. I built a subject-mediated automatic remote testing apparatus (SMARTA) to test the Varecia spp. that I will train subjects to use before running trials to test whether they can perceive and discriminate the color red. I will also use blood samples obtained from DLC to extract genomic DNA for genetic analyses in the Primate Molecular Ecology Lab (PMEL) at Hunter College. I hope that this research can further elucidate whether color vision genotypes in Varecia spp. are expressed phenotypically.