Arnold

Male / adolescent

Mother: Aroide

Arnold is a young low -ranking male. He spends a lot of time grooming other males. He often travels  with Chinois and is easily recognizable by his loud and distinct greeting calls.

Cesar

Male / juvenile

Mother: Carol

Cesar is a lively juvenile chimpanzee. He is the little brother of our alpha male Pandi. He is very confident and often risks getting into fights, even with older males, knowing that his high-ranking mother and brother will defend him.

Moana

Male / juvenile

Mother: Mimi

Moana is a funny little chimp with a distinctive gait that looks like he’s trying to peddle a bicycle. He is very photogenic with a light face and dark black fur. He also has a very distinctive, high-pitched (and unpleasant) pant-hoot. He has a lot of play battles with Cesar and Sia, the other juvenile males.

Pandi

Male / adult

Mother: Carol

Pandi is without a doubt the coolest chimp in the group! He’s the dominant male and is not afraid to show it. He has a very distinctive vocalization – the raspberry, which involves pushing air through his pursed lips (a bit like a fart noise). He likes to be the center of attention and has a lot of social interactions with all group members.

Chenge

Male / adult

Mother: Roxy?

Chenge is a middle-ranking male. He often tries to impress other group members with his displays, when running through the forest while drumming against buttress roots or slapping on the ground. He spends a lot of time with Roxy who we suspect might be his mother.

Freddy

Male / adult

Mother: Mimi

A big teddy-bear of a chimp. Freddy is the dominant male Pandi’s best friend and a high-ranking chimp himself. Freddy is known for his distinctive sleeping pose where he sleeps facedown flat like a pancake. His mother, Mimi and little brother and sister, Moana and Madiba are also part of the Rekambo group.

Ngonde

Male / adult

Mother: Pai

Ngonde is definitely the male of the community that is most shy around humans. He is quite low ranking and spends a lot of time following in the footsteps of Chinois.

Sia

Male / juvenile

Mother: Suzee

Sia is the middle sibling between older brother Thea and little sister Sassandra, who he plays with all the time! He spends a lot of time with just his mother and sister. Although he is nine years old, due to a tumor under his right arm, he has had stunted physical development and resembles a much younger chimp.

Chinois

Male / adult

Mother: unknown

Chinois is the most impressive male in our group. He is characterized by his long and prominent face. He is high-ranking and a lot of the other chimpanzees do their best to stay in his good books. As the oldest male he often takes on a protector role and can usually be found at the back of group of travelling chimpanzees to ensure that nobody is left behind.

Littlegrey

Male / adult

Mother: unknown

Littlegrey is a distinctive looking chimp very lean and with very grey fur. His name comes from when the chimpanzees were still being habituated and all we saw was a grey blob that was constantly in motion. He is Carol’s good friend and also likes to play with the babies in the group. There are periods when he spends quite a lot of time with Roxy and Chenge who we call the ‘Magic Trio’ when all three are together.

Thea

Male / adult

Mother: Suzee

Thea has a uniformly dark coat and is becoming bigger and buffer so we have been observing him starting to find his place amongst the higher ranking males. He has lots of interactions with his family members including his little brother and sister: Sia and Sassandra.

Carol

Female / adult

Carol is a high ranking female and is very popular with all the males in the group, especially Littlegrey. She has two sons, Pandi and Cesar and is a very protective mother who likes to have her eye on her offspring at all times.

Joy

Female / adult

Joy is the youngest of the adult females in the group. She’s one of the most popular females among the males and is groomed a lot.

Pai

Female / adult

Pai is one of our older females and spends quite a lot of time without the main group. She is mother to Ngonde and little Pastis.

Roxy

Female / adult

Roxy spends all of her time in proximity to Chenge. When she is separated from Chenge, or the rest of the group moves on, she has the tendency to start crying and doesn’t stop until another individual replies. Roxy is also a very vocal female and joins in on drumming displays with the males.

Onome

Female / adult

Onome is one of the oldest Rekambo females and is almost completely blind. She spends most of her time with her adolescent son, Orion, a young male who guides her through the forest to prevent her from losing connection to the group.

Suzee

Female / adult

Suzee is a caring mother and spends all her time around her family. She loves playing with her offspring Sia and Sassandra. Her oldest son Thea is already grown up, but still spends lots of time with his family.

Ida

Female / adult

Ida is quite a shy and independent female. She spends most of her time with her adolescent son, Gump and her new adopted daughter, Olive.

Mimi

Female / adult

Mimi is a successful mother of three, Freddy, Moana and little Madiba.

Queliba

Female / adult

Queliba is an orphan and has a severely crippled hand. She therefore spends a lot of time travelling bipedally. She is small for her age and very thin.

Chimpanzee
communication

Chimpanzees communicate using a multitude of facial expressions, gestures and vocalizations. The influence of the environment and social setting on the use of communicative modalities is the subject of Lara M. Southern’s Ph.D..

Inter-group interactions and territorial behavior

Chimpanzees at Loango have extraordinarily large territories and are very aggressive, sometimes even resulting in deadly interactions with neighboring communities (Martínez-Íñigo et al. in press). This might be related to the potentially high feeding competition with other species, including gorillas and elephants (Head et al 2012).

Hunting

Chimpanzees at Loango hunt and feed on a variety of animal species, including several species of monkeys and duikers (Klein et al. 2021). The strategies they employ in these hunts is the topic of Harmonie Klein’s Ph.D. thesis.

Tool use

Chimpanzees at Loango use sticks to gain access to underground and arboreal bee-nests. The exploitation of underground bee-nests was the topic of Vittoria Estienne’s doctoral thesis (Estienne et al. 2017a, 2017b, 2019).

Genetics

We used fecal samples to conduct the first population genetic study in our study area. We identified 7 different chimpanzee communities and estimated the population density to be 2.1 individuals per square kilometer (Arandjelovic et al. 2011). Using relatedness analyses we hope to soon understand the familial relationships within the Rekambo community.

Pathogens

In cooperation with the project group epidemiology of Highly Pathogenic Microorganisms at the RKI in Berlin and the IRET in Libreville, we investigate diseases and their pathogens of the Loango chimpanzees. In the framework of this cooperation, financed by the German Science foundation (DFG), Tangy Tanga works on his PhD.

Bio-monitoring with camera traps

Camera traps are essential to estimate population sizes and implement conservation measures for endangered species. We used camera traps to investigate aspects of feeding competition between chimpanzees, gorillas and elephants (Head et al 2012)), territorial behavior of chimpanzees (Martínez-Íñigo et al. in press) and intergroup interactions (Martínez-Íñigo et al. in press). Recordings of our camera traps were as well made available to the Pan African Programme: The Cultured Chimpanzee (PanAF) and analyzed by citizen scientists on the Chimp&See platform.

Southern, L., Deschner, T., Pika, S., (2021). Lethal coalitionary attacks of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) on gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) in the wild.  read more

Martínez-Íñigo, L., Baas, P., Klein, H., Pika, S., & Deschner, T. (2021). Intercommunity interactions and killings in central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) from Loango National Park, Gabon. Primates, 1-14.  read more

Martínez-Íñigo, L., Baas, P., Klein, H., Pika, S., & Deschner, T. (2021). Home range size in central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) from Loango National Park, Gabon. Primates, 1-12.  read more

Lester, J. D., Vigilant, L., Gratton, P., McCarthy, M. S., Barratt, C. D., Dieguez, P., Agbor, A., Álvarez-Varona, P., Angedakin, S., Ayimisin, A. E., Bailey, E., Bessone, M., Brazzola, G., Chancellor, R., Cohen, H., Danquah, E., Deschner, T., Egbe, V. E., Eno-Nku, M., Goedmakers, A., Granjon, A.-C., Head, J., Hedwig, D., Hernandez-Aguilar, R. A., Jeffery, K. J., Jones, S., Junker, J., Kadam, P., Kaiser, M., Kalan, A. K., Kehoe, L., Kienast, I., Langergraber, K. E., Lapuente, J., Laudisoit, A., Lee, K., Marrocoli, S., Mihindou, V., Morgan, D., Muhanguzi, G., Neil, E., Nicholl, S., Orbell, C., Ormsby, L. J., Pacheco, L., Piel, A., Robbins, M. M., Rundus, A., Sanz, C., Sciaky, L., Siaka, A. M., Städele, V., Stewart, F., Tagg, N., Ton, E., van Schijndel, J., Vyalengerera, M. K., Wessling, E. G., Willie, J., Wittig, R. M., Yuh, Y. G., Yurkiw, K., Zuberbuehler, K., Boesch, C., Kühl, H. S., & Arandjelovic, M. (2021). Recent genetic connectivity and clinal variation in chimpanzees. Communications Biology,4: 283.  read more

Klein, H., Bocksberger, G., Baas, P., Bunel, S., Théleste, E., Pika, S., & Deschner, T. (2021). Hunting of mammals by central chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) in the Loango National Park, Gabon. Primates, 1-12.  read more 

Fontsere, C., Alvarez‐Estape, M., Lester, J. D., Arandjelovic, M., Kuhlwilm, M., Dieguez, P., Agbor, A., Angedakin, S., Ayimisin, A. E., Bessone, M., Brazzola, G., Deschner, T., Eno‐Nku, M., Granjon, A.-C., Head, J. S., Kadam, P., Kalan, A. K., Kambi, M., Langergraber, K., Lapuente, J., Maretti, G., Ormsby, L. J., Piel, A., Robbins, M. M., Stewart, F., Vergnes, V., Wittig, R. M., Kühl, H. S., Marques‐Bonet, T., Hughes, D. A., & Lizano, E. 2020. Maximizing the acquisition of unique reads in noninvasive capture sequencing experiments (advance online). Molecular Ecology Resources, 13300.  read more

Mubemba, B., Gogarten, J. F., Schuenemann, V. J., Düx, A., Lang, A., Nowak, K., Pléh, K., Reiter, E., Ulrich, M., Agbor, A., Brazzola, G., Deschner, T., Dieguez, P., Granjon, A.-C., Jones, S., Junker, J., Wessling, E., Arandjelovic, M., Kühl, H. S., Wittig, R. M., Leendertz, F. H., & Calvignac-Spencer, S. 2020. Geographically structured genomic diversity of non-human primate-infecting Treponema pallidum subsp. pertenue. Microbial Genomics,6(11).  read more

Kalan, A. K., Kulik, L., Arandjelovic, M., Boesch, C., Haas, F., Dieguez, P., Barratt, C. D., Abwe, E. E., Agbor, A., Angedakin, S., Aubert, F., Ayimisin, A. E., Bailey, E., Bessone, M., Brazzola, G., Buh, V. E., Chancellor, R., Cohen, H., Coupland, C., Curran, B., Danquah, E., Deschner, T., Dowd, D., Eno-Nku, M., Fay, M. J., Goedmakers, A., Granjon, A.-C., Head, J., Hedwig, D., Hermans, V., Jeffery, K. J., Jones, S., Junker, J., Kadam, P., Kambi, M., Kienast, I., Kujirakwinja, D., Langergraber, K. E., Lapuente, J., Larson, B., Lee, K., Leinert, V., Llana, M., Marrocoli, S., Meier, A., Morgan, B., Morgan, D., Neil, E., Nicholl, S., Normand, E., Ormsby, L. J., Pacheco, L., Piel, A., Preece, J., Robbins, M. M., Rundus, A., Sanz, C., Sommer, V., Stewart, F., Tagg, N., Tennie, C., Vergnes, V., Welsh, A., Wessling, E. G., Willie, J., Wittig, R. M., Yuh, Y. G., Zuberbühler, K., & Kühl, H. S. 2020. Environmental variability supports chimpanzee behavioural diversity. Nature Communications,11(1): 4451.  read more

Gillespie, T. R., Leendertz, F. H., The Great Ape Health Consortium, including authors, Deschner, T., Robbins, M. M., Wittig, R. M., & & others (2020). COVID-19: protect great apes during human pandemics. Nature,579, 497-497.  read more

Gogarten, J. F., Calvignac-Spencer, S., Nunn, C. L., Ulrich, M., Saiepour, N., Nielsen, H. V., Deschner, T., Fichtel, C., Kappeler, P. M., Knauf, S., Müller-Klein, N., Ostner, J., Robbins, M. M., Sangmaneedet, S., Schülke, O., Surbeck, M., Wittig, R. M., Sliwa, A., Strube, C., Leendertz, F. H., Roos, C., & Noll, A. (2020). Metabarcoding of eukaryotic parasite communities describes diverse parasite assemblages spanning the primate phylogeny. Molecular Ecology,20(1), 204-215.  read more

Estienne, V. L., Robira, B., Mundry, R., Deschner, T., & Boesch, C. (2019). Acquisition of a complex extractive technique by the immature chimpanzees of Loango National Park, Gabon. Animal Behaviour, 147, 61-76.  read more 

Hagemann, L., Arandjelovic, M., Robbins, M. M., Deschner, T., Lewis, M., Froese, G., Boesch, C. and Vigilant, L. 2019. Long-term inference of population size and habitat use in a socially dynamic population of wild western lowland gorillas. Conservation Genetics,20(6), 1303-1314.  read more