Microscopic clues help Frank Cuozzo and Jenifer Ness evaluate field observations and specimens from southern Madagascar, halfway around the globe.

Frank Cuozzo, University of North Dakota assistant professor of anthropology, is known to pop in a favorite copy of the animated movie “Madagascar” from time to time during his classes in Babcock Hall.

You know, the tale about four zoo inmates — a lion, zebra, giraffe and hippo — who escape from their New York City confinement only to end up on a ship bound for Madagascar, where they run into a band of party-loving lemurs.  Yes, that movie.

Oh, just ask your kids, if you don’t know.

With a look that says, “I’m serious, even though you don’t think I am,” Cuozzo tells UND Discovery the classroom showings are purely educational.

Cuozzo goes on, “I tell the class, ‘Let’s look at the way the movie portrays lemurs.   What did they get right and what did they get wrong?’

“For instance, in the movie they have a character who is the ‘King of the Lemurs,’ but that could never happen among ring-tailed lemurs because they are a female-dominant species.”

Roughing it
The movie serves as an effective learning tool on subjects that Cuozzo is passionate about: Madagascar and lemurs.  In a twisted sort of way, the characters in the movie are a reflection of Cuozzo, a New Jersey native who grew up only a taxi commute from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.  It’s a place he frequents to conduct research, even today, while serving as a UND professor.

Each year for the past seven years, Cuozzo and a team of scientists have been traveling to a remote region of southern Madagascar, an island nation about the size of California and much of Oregon combined, to study the endangered ring-tailed lemurs that live at the Beza Mahafaly Special Reserve.  The Beza Mahafaly Lemur Biology Project team spends between two and three months living in tents and buying sustenance off the local economy in one of most rural areas of one of the poorest countries on the planet.

Just to get to the conservation reserve from Toliara, the provincial capital, a traveler would take an eight-hour ride on a makeshift bus, often a crudely configured flatbed truck with seats affixed with nails, followed by a six-hour trek by oxcart.

“You are completely isolated,” Cuozzo said.  Madagascar is about 10,000 miles from Grand Forks.

An expert on the ringtail lemur, Frank Cuozzo has developed a specialty in dental anthropology.  By examining the teeth of lemurs over many years, he has gathered information on their health, eating habits, and adaptation to their changing environment.

Dental clues
Cuozzo and his colleagues are studying threats posed to the local ring-tailed lemur population.  What they’ve found is overgrazing by cattle herds has decimated the supply of soft fruits and other palatable lemur delights outside of the conservation zone.  This frequently forces the lemurs high into the trees above the degraded areas to feed on the tough pods of the fruit from the tamarind tree.  The change in diet has been too rapid for the lemurs’ bodies to adapt, causing intense tooth wear and severe oral infections that impact their overall health.

Scientists have a term for such disproportionate effects on a species caused by quick environmental changes: “evolutionary disequilibrium.”

Cuozzo has taken a page out of the old science handbook and developed a new method he calls “dental ecology.”

“It’s kind of a new twist; we’re showing you can use tooth wear in a new way,” he said.  “You can use dental pathology as a marker for environmental changes.”

A bigger zone
Cuozzo, along with Michelle Sauther, from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Ibrahim Antho Jacky Youssouf, a native Malagasy from the University of Toliara in Madagascar, lead one of two established research teams at the reserve, each group focusing on one of the two day-active lemur species in the region.  This long-term work has led to stability of the reserve (over 20 years), which from the start has integrated the needs and traditions of the local people.  The effort was aided by the recent expansion of the reserve, from about 1,500 acres to the current nearly 10,000 acres.  Central to this expansion are agreements that allow citizens of the region and the conservation zone to co-exist.

Cuozzo and Sauther’s conservation efforts earned prestigious recognition last summer at the International Primatological Society’s Biannual Congress in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Cuozzo concentrates on dental impacts related to the lemurs’ habitat, while Sauther is a primate health and behavior specialist.  Youssouf is a doctoral student who serves as chief of research at the conservation reserve.  The stateside anthropologists keep in routine contact with Youssouf as he monitors the lemurs year round.

“It has led to synergies that helped us do things that we would never be able to do ourselves,” Cuozzo said.

Lemur populations offer particularly valuable information because their environment — Madagascar and the Comoro Islands — is one of the last areas of the world to be impacted by human settlement.

Dedicated student researcher
The team picked up its newest member last year in UND undergraduate Jenifer Ness, a native of Bismarck.  She made her first visit to Madagascar with the team following final tests in the spring of 2008.

Ness spent her time collecting scat samples from feral dogs and large wildcats — presumed predators of lemurs — and a direct, albeit unnatural, threat to the endangered animals.  She painstakingly sifted through the samples, finding remnants of lemur parts.  It allowed her to document a direct correlation between the nontraditional predators and the declining population of lemurs.

Cuozzo was impressed with the dedication and professionalism exhibited by Ness as an undergraduate researcher under trying conditions.

“This has been an amazing opportunity for her,” Cuozzo said.  “I wish I had had that kind of opportunity as an undergrad.”