Damiana Ravasi
Ph.D. candidate, Dept. of Zoology, University of Cape Town
Damiana Ravasi completed her Master of Science in Biology in 2001, at the University of Neuchâtel, in Switzerland. Following her passion for primate conservation, she then spent two years working with lar gibbons in a conservation project in Thailand. There she supervised, as a research co-ordinator, the collection and analysis of behavioural data on the gibbons released to the wild (Ravasi D 2004). In 2004 Damiana came to South Africa and worked here for eight months as a research assistant collecting data on several troops of baboons ranging in the Cape Peninsula. During this period she gained experience on baboon ecology and behaviour and came in contact with the various issues caused by daily human-baboon interactions. In 2005 she started her own Ph.D. project at the University of Cape Town.
Damiana is interested in primate conservation. Her project examines how anthropogenic disturbance affects primate ecology and behaviour, specifically through the disruption of an important ecological process, namely parasite infection dynamics.
References
Ravasi D (2004). Phuket’s forest sings again: A survey of a group of white-handed gibbons (Hylobates lar) released in Khao Phra Thaew Non-Hunting Area, Phuket, Thailand. http://www.gibbonproject.org/content/forest.htm
