Elena Cunningham is Clinical Associate Professor in Basic Science and Craniofacial Biology in new York university.

Elena Cunningham is interested in understanding how the interplay between ecological and social factors contributed to the evolution of primate cognition. She is beginning a three-year investigation of lemur foraging cognition at the Lemur Conservation Foundation in Myakka, Florida. Lemurs have been referred to as living fossils. The overall goal of the project is to delineate key aspects of the mental tool kit that lemurs use to find food. The specific aims of year one are to: 1) identify the optimal learning schedule for long-term retention of complex spatial information; 2) learn about the natural ranging patterns and responses to novel feeding sites of the semi-free ranging lemurs; and 3) test lemurs’ memory for 1 to 4 novel food locations after delays ranging from 1 to 100+ days. She is also completing a study of the ranging and foraging behavior of the black and white ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata) in Ranomafana National Park, Madagascar. The goal of this project is to determine whether the black and white ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata) 1) relies on memory to locate food sources and 2)remember the relative productivity of these sources 3) use a targeted search strategy to identify resources. Previously, Dr. Cunningham studied the use of memory in the foraging strategy of the white faced saki monkey (Pithecia pithecia). Elena Cunningham collaborated with Jo Setchell and Steve Unwin on a study of the relative safety of various darting practices (darting is a common way of immobilizing primates in the wild). They are organizing a round table Can we make wild primate capture safer?at the combined International Primatological Society and American Society of Primatology) Conference to be held in Chicago inAugust 2016.