The Thrill of Drill Research in Cameroon

The distribution of the drill is not well known, although it seems to survive in a very restricted range of fragmented forests in western Cameroon, Southeast Nigeria and Bioko Island. The critical conservation status of the drill and their ever increasing threats from habitat loss, bush-meat hunting, and disease requires urgent concerted effort to ensure their survival.

For conservation efforts supporting drill survival to be effective, there is an urgent need to monitor the surviving populations, through collection of accurate baseline data on their genetic variability, and socio-ecology that can be shared with researchers, conservationists, local managers, and policy makers. Acquiring accurate data on elusive and endangered primates such as drills, with large home ranges in dense tropical forests, can be logistically problematic if relying exclusively on field observations alone. Fortunately, recent advances in the collection and storage of noninvasive fecal samples from wild populations, and in the application of molecular techniques to the analysis of feces have provided a new approach to the study and management of threatened and endangered species.

Identifying individual drills will revolutionize census data and management techniques in the field in Cameroon, and has enormous conservation value. To date, there is no information on the level genetic diversity within population, nor data on their social structure and group composition. The goal of the proposed study is to employ genetic markers and DNA extracted from feces to identify the number of wild drill groups ranging in the study area, assess the level genetic variability and the extent of gene-flow between neighboring fragmented habitats. We hope that data generated will provide a framework that will potentially help in assessing the extent of threats posed by decrease in genetic variation or reduction in gene-flow, all of which are effects of a shrunken population size, mainly due to bush-meat hunting and habitat loss/ fragmentation. In addition, samples from captive drills will also be analyzed for the same genetic markers to assess their genetic variability (including genetic relationships) and generate information useful for future captive management (especially breeding-pair selection).