Meet The Team

I am a PhD student studying how chimpanzees coordinate their movements through communication. To do this, I am also exploring better ways to monitor both their movements and their vocalizations using an array of camera traps and acoustic sensors. By employing machine learning models, I hope to distinguish individual chimpanzees calling to one another using data from acoustic sensors placed across the landscape. This will allow us to see who is calling and, more interestingly, who is responding, and perhaps, through camera trap footage, who is ignoring whom. To train my voice model, I spend much of my time collecting vocalizations from known individuals, which means I am also beginning to learn their voices myself! This study will provide evidence about what determines who responds to calls, calls that are thought to play a role in coordinating movement. The project will also offer methodological insights into how best to monitor individual movements and what information we can infer from remote sensing technologies such as camera traps and acoustic sensors.

My name is Wiske Bovee and I studied Forestry at Van Hall Larenstein, the Netherlands. I first came to Issa in 2023 as an intern where I mainly assisted in butterfly and mushroom studies. I am very happy to be back here, this time as research advisor and to pursue a project exploring mycorrhizal symbiosis