David Morgan, Ph.D.
Resarch Fellow, Co-director of the Goualouogo Triangle Ape Research Project
Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes

David Morgan graduated from Western Carolina University in 1992, where he majored in biology. His undergraduate research focused on the anti-predator behavior of garter snakes and rattlesnakes. Following his undergraduate studies, Morgan interned at the Smithsonian Institute's National Zoo.

His long-term interest in African great apes led him to a research assistantship in 1997 with the Mbeli Bai Gorilla Project, located in the Nouabale-Ndoki National Park of the Republic of Congo. His duties included collecting behavioral data on western lowland gorillas and forest elephants that frequented the Mbeli forest clearing. In 1999, Morgan initiated a study of chimpanzees in the nearby forests of the Goualougo Triangle. His investigation on the social structure, spatial distribution and feeding ecology of three neighboring communities of chimpanzees is the focus of his graduate research at Cambridge University, U.K.

Morgan is co-director of the Goualouogo Triangle Ape Research Project and has established a long-term research program on the behavioral ecology of wild chimpanzees in the Goualougo Triangle study area. As a research fellow of the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes, Morgan collaborates with other field biologists and Lincoln Park Zoo scientists on research projects aimed at improving the conservation status of chimpanzee and gorilla populations throughout Africa. His particular interests include evaluating the effects of mechanized logging on the behavior and ecology of sympatric chimpanzee and gorillas in the Congo Basin. He serves on the Section of Great Apes of the IUCN's Primate Specialist Group and is a founding member of the A.P.E.S. database initiative.