Written by Camille DeSisto, Ph.D. candidate at the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment. Originally published in LEMURS Magazine: The “Where” Issue in February 2025. Ecologists study the relationships between living things, including humans, and their environment. By studying the complex ways that plants and animals are connected to each other and the world around […]
Written and Illustrated by Talia Felgenhauer, 2023-24 Undergraduate Fellow in Communications. Originally published in LEMURS Magazine: The “Why” Issue in February 2024. Madagascar is an island like no other. Located hundreds of miles off the southeastern coast of Africa, Madagascar has been isolated for more than 80 million years, changing and evolving independently from the […]
Written by Nestorine, Ph.D. student at the University of Mahajanga. Originally published in LEMURS Magazine: The “Where” Issue in February 2025. I was born in the Farahalana countryside in the district of Sambava, in the SAVA region of northeastern Madagascar. I am working on my Ph.D. at the Doctoral School of Life Engineering and Modeling (EDGVM) […]
In the summer of 2024, Duke undergraduate Erika Kraabel traveled to Madagascar to help the DLC Museum of Natural History team collect lemur bones at Bezà Mahafaly Special Reserve, a longstanding research site in southwestern Madagascar. “At the DLC Museum, I’ve been learning the foundations of fossil preparation and have been involved in rehousing the […]
By Orion Kornfeld with Karie Whitman and Matt Borths, Ph.D. Published in the 2022 Duke Lemur Center annual magazine. Read the original here. The Duke Lemur Center Museum of Natural History (DLCMNH) is the only fossil preparation lab at Duke University. “The fossils at the DLC teach us when, where, and how the ancestors of […]
An important part of the Duke Lemur Center’s mission is to inspire and train the next generation of scientists and environmental stewards. To do that, the DLC offers as many opportunities as possible for students to work side-by-side withe the Lemur Center’s researchers, science educators, animal care and veterinary staff, and conservationists. Here, Duke Evolutionary […]
Ren Collins, a summer intern with the DLC Museum of Natural History, traveled with the Duke fossil team to Wyoming in 2023. There, Ren captured drone footage of the badlands to tell the story of fossils from the field to the museum.
For some people, the word “rainforest” conjures up vague notions of teeming jungles. But Camille DeSisto sees something more specific: a complex interdependent web. For the past few years, the Duke graduate student has been part of a community-driven study exploring the relationships between people, plants, and lemurs in a rainforest in northern Madagascar, where the health […]
