Chiara Gold

I completed my Bachelor’s degree in Biodiversity Sciences at Claude Bernard University Lyon 1 (France), where I developed a strong interest in ecology, evolution and animal behaviour. I then pursued a Master’s degree in Organismal Biology and Ecology at the University of Liège (Belgium), focusing on behavioural ecology, conservation biology and primatology.

For my Master’s thesis, I investigated the sleeping site selection of the critically endangered black-shanked douc langur (Pygathrix nigripes) in Cát Tiên National Park, Vietnam. Using thermal infrared drones combined with ecological field surveys, I studied how factors such as predation risk and food availability influence sleeping site selection. This work was later published in Current Zoology.

During my studies and afterwards, I gained extensive field experience working with wild primates. I spent nine months in South Africa as a field assistant on a long-term chacma baboon project, contributing to research on stress resilience, hormonal variation, seasonality, dominance relationships and reproductive behaviour. More recently, I spent eight months in Guinea with the Moyen Bafing Chimpanzee Project, where I contributed to chimpanzee habituation, behavioural observations, camera trapping, tool-use monitoring and phenology surveys.

These experiences strengthened my passion for field-based research and reinforced my interest in understanding how social and ecological factors shape primate behaviour.

Social curiosity and long-term social memory in Guinea baboons

Guinea baboons live in one of the most socially tolerant and complex multilevel societies among primates. While previous research has mainly focused on males, much less is known about adult females, despite the fact that females leave their natal group and must integrate into an unfamiliar social environment.

My PhD investigates how adult female Guinea baboons acquire, remember and use social information during this integration process. By combining behavioural observations with playback experiments at the CRP Simenti field site in Senegal, I will examine when females are most socially curious, which situations trigger information seeking, and whether the information they gather influences their subsequent social decisions. Ultimately, this project aims to better understand how social curiosity and social memory help animals navigate complex social environments.

I have been fascinated by non-human primates for as long as I can remember, which is what inspired me to pursue a career in primatology and shaped many of the choices I have made throughout my studies and fieldwork.

My research interests lie at the intersection of behavioural ecology and cognition. I am particularly interested in how animals acquire, use and remember social information, and how these processes influence social decision-making.

I am especially fascinated by the remarkably complex multilevel society of Guinea baboons. Their social system provides a unique opportunity to study how individuals navigate dynamic social environments. In particular, I am interested in female dispersal and how females integrate into a new group, build new social relationships and acquire the social knowledge needed to adapt to an unfamiliar social environment.

More broadly, I hope my research will contribute to a better understanding of the evolution of social cognition and social intelligence in wild primates.