Roberto Delgado - Primatological Fieldwork in Indonesia

[Adult female orangutan and infant from the Gunung Leuser National Park in northern Sumatra] Roberto Delgado is interested in understanding the evolutionary basis of human social behavior by studying great apes in the wild. His research focuses on the function of long-distance vocal communication in Bornean and Sumatran populations of orangutans and its implications for social structure and reproductive strategies, including female mate choice and sexual coercion. Only through comparative field studies on wild ape populations can we hope to understand their social organization, mating systems and the patterns of association among individuals to continue developing realistic models of hominid behavioral ecology and the evolution of human social behavior.