Dr Nicola Bryson-Morrison

Dr Nicola Bryson-Morrison is currently the Principle Investigator, along with Dr Tatyana Humle, on the Sanctuary Ape Nutrition Project. This ARCUS Foundation-funded project aims to understand the nutritional needs of in-situ sanctuary apes to improve standards of care in captivity and to better equip individuals for release back into the wild.  This research is conducted in collaboration with the Pan African Sanctuary Alliance (PASA), Professor Jessica Rothman (Hunter College Of The City University Of New York) and Professor David Raubenheimer (University of Sydney). 

Dr Bryson-Morrison completed her PhD in Biological Anthropology at SAC in 2017, under the supervision of Dr Humle. Her PhD, Habitat use and nutrition of chimpanzees in an anthropogenic landscape: A case study in Bossou, Guinea, West Africa, utilised a number of nutritional, ecological and behavioural techniques to examine chimpanzee adaptability to human pressures and the ability of disturbed landscapes to support populations, with particular emphasis on negative human/non-human primate interactions and the drivers of crop-foraging behaviours. 

Nicola was also a Graduate Teaching Assistant, conducting a range of teaching and seminar duties throughout her time as a PhD candidate. Nicola is a member of the Primate Society of Great Britain (PSGB), International Primatological Society (IPS) and European Association of Zoos and Aquaria Nutrition Working Group (ENG). 

Dr Nicola Bryson-Morrison is a member of the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology.  

Dr Bryson-Morrison has broad interests in nutritional ecology, human/non-human primate interactions and primate adaptations to environmental change. She utilises innovative frameworks of nutritional ecology, including nutritional geometry, to examine nutrient balancing and prioritisation of primates to better understand their nutritional needs in captivity, as well as the ability of wild populations to survive in degraded human-dominated environments. In particular, she is interested in the role of nutrition in crop-foraging strategies and the use of other shared resources, the ability of primates to meet their nutritional needs from anthropogenic landscapes, and oil palm as a resource for fragmented primate populations.