Who are the lorises...

As you can see from the picture, I work on a small nocturnal primate in one of the most populated part of the world! In the last couple of years my research on the slender loris males focused on the male mating tactics and alternative strategies in a human modified ecosystem. However, in today's world, I guess there are no lorises found in so called pristine habitat. You must be wondering - who are these slender lorises (singular: loris) and why do I work on them? They are perhaps the most illusive little critters that lead an arboreal life in the tropical and subtropical forests of southern India and Sri Lanka. They are the denizens of dry and moist deciduous forests of India and Sri Lanka. These forest types are also shared by the other primate denizens - bonnet macaques, lion tailed macaques, common langurs, nilgiri langurs and Humans. Although they share their habitats with other primates, however, the most direct competition comes from humans. My earlier research have shown that lorises use the same species of plants that are good for fuel wood. They are nocturnal and hence sleep during the day - but unlike other arboreal mammals and birds, they do not use nest holes. Instead they sleep in canopy - very thick and/or thorny canopy. The most commonly used liana by the lorises is Zizyphus which is very thorny and found in the mid storey of a dry forest in southern India. When a local fire wood collector comes to the forest for some fuel wood, the best way to reach his/her desired tree (covered with lianas) would be to remove the thorny lianas and then prune the branches. Here goes the nest thickets of the lorises as well as continuity of the canopy! Being arboreal, lorises are most comfortable walking slowly in the canopy unless they have to hurry because there is a predator! Evolutionary modifications of limbs are visible from outside without looking at bare skeletal structurtes.

It is interesting to see that lorises are still surviving in some parts of southern India amid the high density of humans in small groves or scrub forests where you may not expect to see them. But how well are they doing? are their behaviors plastic enough to adapt in the modified human environment - how long? What behavioral strategies they are adapting to deal with constant human modifications? Are they developing behavioral strategies at population level and at individual level to survive? How many of them are there? Can we develop management strategies based on behavioral ecology and population biology of the species? And above all how many different species of slender lorises are there? These are some of the questions that I am interested in...