conducted by Martha Robbins
 Gorillas are found in nine Central African countries, in a broad diversity of habitats
ranging from coastal lowland forests to the high altitude, afromontane rainforests.
Despite their wide distribution, all four subspecies of gorillas are threatened with extinction.
In particular, mountain gorillas are most endangered with approximately 700 individuals remaining
in two isolated populations: the Virunga Volcanoes of Rwanda, Uganda,
and Democratic Republic of Congo and the Bwindi-Impenetrable National Park, Uganda.
The distribution of gorillas makes them particularly interesting to study,
both in terms of understanding how they have adapted to such a variety of habitats and by
providing a excellent opportunity to test many hypotheses of primate behavioral ecology that
assume variation in ecology will lead to variation in behavior and demography. A major goal of
current research on gorillas is to understand the causes and consequences of variability in ecology,
behavior, life histories, and genetics in differing environments. While extensive research has been
conducted on the behavior and ecology of mountain gorillas in the Virunga Volcanoes, work on other
gorilla populations has mainly focused on their ecology, partially due to the difficulties
encountered in habituating western lowland gorillas. However, in recent years significant progress
has been made in studies of other gorilla populations to address their patterns of sociality,
feeding ecology, and demography.
 Specific research questions include:
- How does the diet of gorillas vary across populations?
- Do dietary differences among gorilla populations lead to variation in home range size and utilization?
- How do gorilla ranging patterns vary according to group size, degree of frugivory and other variables?
- What is the nutritional make-up of gorilla food items? How does the nutritional components of the major dietary items vary between gorilla populations?
- Do gorillas forage efficiently? For example do they alter their ranging patterns according to food availability and caloric intake?
- How do differences in diet, specifically an increase consumption of a clumped food resource such as fruit, influence the social relationships of group members?
- What reproductive strategies are used by males and females, and what factors influence the reproductive success of both males and females?
- How do individual behavioral and demographic factors (for example dispersal patterns, birth and mortality rates) translate into population level phenomena (for example population structure and growth rates)?
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