By Rhiannon See, 2022-23 Undergraduate Fellow in Communications. Originally published in Duke Lemur Center Magazine in 2022.
Each summer, the DLC’s field research internships provide a select group of students with an introduction to lemur research and conservation, instilling in them the importance of teamwork and preparing them for future research-related careers. At summer’s end, the DLC is presented with dozens of intern projects, many of which give insight into the current state of lemur welfare, allowing the Center to take steps for continued improvement.
During her internship, Lisa discovered a new passion for plant and animal ID and turned this interest into a resource for the DLC. With the help of Kyle and Megan, the group created an online dichotomous key for the current and future interns to use when identifying in the field. With 73 slides, the interactive presentation allows the user to learn about plant characteristics and identify 40+ different species.
A Peek into Lisa McCullough’s Life
Lisa McCullough was a summer ‘18 field research intern who carried her internship skills abroad and back again to continue to work alongside the DLC. Lisa applied to the field research internship with little research experience, hoping that the program would give her a better understanding of what to focus on for the remainder of her time at Cornell University, where she was a rising junior.
“The field research internship is designed specifically for students who don’t have much prior experience in field research but want to learn about it to see if it’s a possible career path for them,” says Erin Ehmke, Ph.D., Director of Research at the DLC. With acceptance to the program, Lisa traveled to North Carolina for the summer.
Erin Hecht, the DLC’s Student and Volunteer Program Coordinator, recalls that “Lisa’s interests were broad and she was ready to throw herself into everything the intern program had to offer”—a great recipe for success.
Lisa and her family on vacation in 2004. Lisa became interested in the environment as she went on family vacations where she backpacked, hiked, and camped.
New Beginnings as an Intern
The field research internship cohort that summer included Lisa, two additional undergraduates, and two people preparing for a post-graduation career change.
They were taught early on how to do a research method called group scan sampling, a process consisting of following lemurs through their forested enclosures and documenting their behavior every 10 minutes. The group connected quickly, becoming “one of the most cohesive intern cohorts we’ve had in the program,” says Hecht.
When asked to recall one of her favorite memories during her summer internship, Lisa reminisces the celebration of a fellow intern with cake and decorations.
A main goal of the field research internship is for students to design and complete their own independent projects over the course of the program. “As Lisa learned more about lemur research and what’s been studied at the DLC, she started churning out her own research questions,” Hecht recalls. “She’d light up with excitement at each new idea and potential pathways to explore it.”
Lisa’s project idea was so big, “I felt overwhelmed doing it alone,” she says. “But doing it together felt exciting and achievable.” She and two members of her cohort, Kyle Taylor and Megan Sinclair, teamed up to do a joint study. The study observed how four species of lemur were using their space and whether the plants they were consuming were based on the lemurs’ preference or the plants’ availability.
Through her research, Lisa and her team observed the ring-tailed lemurs primarily eating dead leaves and muscadine while also consuming weeds and vines, twigs and bark, and black locusts. Photo by Sara Nicholson.
“Based on a short pilot study, we hypothesized that Coquerel’s sifakas at the Lemur Center do forage preferentially,” Lisa recalls. “Basically, we think that sifakas’ foraging preferences are not, apparently, guided only by forage availability.”
Theirs was the first student project at the DLC that examined how the sifakas were utilizing their enclosures. Ultimately, studies by later researchers led to the discovery that the lemurs in Natural Habitat Enclosure #4 were utilizing only ⅓ of their 14.4-acre forest. The DLC is now in the process of developing a plan to redraw the enclosure boundaries to provide space for new lemurs to free-range, utilizing the area unused by the enclosure’s current inhabitants.
“Lisa and her cohort were an extremely successful group at doing their independent study,” says Ehmke. “Their research began a conversation that led to the start of important changes at the DLC.”
Through her research, Lisa and her team observed the Coquerel’s Sifaka primarily eating sourwood while also consuming muscadine, tulip poplar, and lespedeza. Photo by David Haring.
Radio telemetry lesson at the Duke Lemur Center.
Traveling to Madagascar, Returning to the U.S.
Following the end of the internship program, Lisa felt much more confident in her research abilities and wanted to continue to build her experience. She was inspired to carry her skills abroad and was accepted into a program in Antalaha, a city in the SAVA region of northeastern Madagascar, for her spring semester. Here Lisa worked alongside five American students and seven Malagasy students from the local university, the Centre Universitaire Régional de la SAVA (CURSA).
Lisa primarily worked with Coquerel’s sifaka, red-ruffed, ring-tailed, and red-fronted lemurs during her internship. Coquerel’s sifakas became her favorite as she spent the summer working so closely with them.
After completing her field-based classes, Lisa planned, proposed, and completed a month-long research study in the Loky-Manambato Protected Area, three days’ travel north of Antalaha and home of the rare golden-crowned sifaka.
Lisa used her independent study project from the DLC as a baseline for her research in Madagascar, where she compared the ranging and feeding behavior of lemurs in Loky-Manambato with free-ranging lemurs at the DLC. For this project, Lisa did group scans and observed lemurs’ behavior and diet variety as well as what parts of the plant they were consuming, the lemurs’ relative height in the trees, and the ambient temperature. This data was used to compare the forest environments of northeastern Madagascar and North Carolina, and to determine whether the enclosure size and feeding options at the DLC impacted the behavior of its lemurs.
After finishing the Madagascar program, Lisa returned to the Lemur Center for a second summer, where she furthered her research using similar techniques and continued to learn from mentor relationships that had begun at the DLC.
Propithecus tattersalli at SAVA region field site in Madagascar.
American and Malagasy students cruising towards some mangroves in Madagascar.
Impacts of the Internship Program
The DLC’s internship program was the first step on a long journey toward research knowledge for Lisa, and it has continued to be a resource for many aspects of her career. “The relationships I forged at the DLC as an intern were what made me want to do field research, and the skills I learned there were what made it possible,” says Lisa. “I want to be the kind of colleague our DLC interns and staff were for each other. We were determined to work, sweat, laugh, celebrate, and discover as a team.”
Lisa is now a Science Coordinator in Conservation International’s Center for Natural Climate Solutions, where she coordinates a team whose purpose is to implement ways to work with nature to mitigate climate change.
“The research techniques taught and relationships built during my summer internship compounded into so many amazing and rewarding experiences,” says Lisa. “It was such a privilege to participate.”
Lisa and a friend preparing a play script to be delivered in Malagasy (Betsimitsaraka dialect).
