Dame Alison Fettes Richard,DBE,DL (born 1 March 1948) is an English anthropologist,conservationist and university administrator. She was the 344th Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge,[3] the third Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge since the post became full-time,and the second woman.[4] Before arriving at Cambridge,she served as the provost of Yale University from 1994 to 2002.
In 1972,she moved to Yale University where she taught and continued her research on the ecology and social behavior of wild primates in Central America,West Africa,the Himalayan foothills of Pakistan,and the southern forests of Madagascar. She was named Professor of Anthropology in 1986 and chaired the Department of Anthropology at Yale from 1986 to 1990. From 1991 to 1994 she was the Director of Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History,which houses one of the world's most important university natural history collections. In 1998 she was named the Franklin Muzzy Crosby Professor of the Human Environment.[6]
Richard is best known for her studies of the sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi),a lemur of southern and western Madagascar. With collaborators and students,she led a program of field observation,capture and release,anatomical measurement,and genetic and hormone sampling,of more than 700 individually known sifaka from 1984 to the present.[citation needed] This is one of the largest primate populations continuously observed for such a long period. The research has yielded valuable insights into sifaka life-histories,demography,social behavior,and genetics. These,in turn,expand the understanding of the variation in the lives and biology of the members of the primate order.[7] the Schwartz Foundation,[7]
In 2022 she published The Sloth Lemur's Song.
University administration
From 1994 until 2002,she was Provost of Yale University with operational responsibility for the university's financial and academic programs and planning. From 2003 to 2010,Richard was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. During her tenure,she led several major changes in university policy,ranging from intellectual property to undergraduate financial aid,re-organized management of the university's endowment,and expanded Cambridge's global partnerships,most notably in the US,China,India,Singapore,and the Persian Gulf.[8] She launched and completed a billion-pound fund-raising campaign,the largest ever for a UK university.[9]
Conservation
In the 1970s,in collaboration with RW Sussman (Washington University in St. Louis) and G Ramanantsoa (University of Madagascar),she helped establish a nature reserve at Beza-Mahafaly,southwest Madagascar,which was formally incorporated into the Madagascar Nature Reserve system in 1986.[7]
For more than three decades,she has worked with colleagues to help conserve the reserve's unique natural heritage,sponsor training and research by students from Madagascar and elsewhere,and to enhance socio-economic opportunities for people living in and around the forest. Over the years,these conservation efforts have been funded by the Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation,[10]WWF,[7] the Schwartz Foundation,[7] and USAID.
Advisory boards
Richard is currently a member of the Boards of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute,[11] and of WWF International.[12] She serves as an advisor to the Liz Claiborne/Art Ortenberg Foundation,Arcadia Fund,and to the Cambridge Conservation Initiative. She is also chairman of the advisory board of the executive search firm Perrett Laver.
She has received honorary doctorates from universities in the UK (Edinburgh,Queens University Belfast,Anglia Ruskin,Exeter,Cambridge),China (Peking,Chinese University of Hong Kong),Madagascar (University of Antananarivo),Canada (York),Korea (Ewha Women's University) and the US (Yale),and in 2011 she was made a Fellow of King's College,London.[citation needed]
She was awarded the Green Globe Award of the Rainforest Alliance (1998),and the Verrill Medal,Yale University (2008). She was made Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Cambridgeshire in 2004.[14] She is an Honorary Fellow of Lucy Cavendish,Newnham and Wolfson Colleges,University of Cambridge.[citation needed]
The Indriidae are a family of strepsirrhine primates. They are medium- to large-sized lemurs, with only four teeth in the toothcomb instead of the usual six. Indriids, like all lemurs, live exclusively on the island of Madagascar.
A sifaka is a lemur of the genus Propithecus from the family Indriidae within the order Primates. The name of their family is an onomatopoeia of their characteristic "shi-fak" alarm call. Like all lemurs, they are found only on the island of Madagascar. All species of sifakas are threatened, ranging from endangered to critically endangered.
Lemurs are wet-nosed primates of the superfamily Lemuroidea, divided into 8 families and consisting of 15 genera and around 100 existing species. They are endemic to the island of Madagascar. Most existing lemurs are small, have a pointed snout, large eyes, and a long tail. They chiefly live in trees and are active at night.
Jules Pierre Verreaux was a French botanist and ornithologist and a professional collector of and trader in natural history specimens. He was the brother of Édouard Verreaux and nephew of Pierre Antoine Delalande.
Verreaux's sifaka, or the white sifaka, is a medium-sized primate in one of the lemur families, the Indriidae. Critically Endangered, it lives in Madagascar and can be found in a variety of habitats from rainforest to dry deciduous forests of western Madagascar and the spiny thickets of the south. Its fur is thick and silky and generally white with brown on the sides, top of the head, and on the arms. Like all sifakas, it has a long tail that it uses as a balance when leaping from tree to tree. However, its body is so highly adapted to an arboreal existence, on the ground its only means of locomotion is hopping. The species lives in small troops which forage for food.
Anne Elisabeth Jane Claiborne was an American fashion designer and businesswoman. Her success was built upon stylish yet affordable apparel for career women featuring colorfully tailored separates that could be mixed and matched. Claiborne co-founded Liz Claiborne Inc., which in 1986 became the first company founded by a woman to make the Fortune 500 list. Claiborne was the first woman to become chair and CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
Patricia Chapple Wright is an American primatologist, anthropologist, and conservationist. Wright is best known for her extensive study of social and family interactions of wild lemurs in Madagascar.
Alison Jolly was a primatologist, known for her studies of lemur biology. She wrote several books for both popular and scientific audiences and conducted extensive fieldwork on Lemurs in Madagascar, primarily at the Berenty Reserve, a small private reserve of gallery forest set in the semi-arid spiny desert area in the far south of Madagascar.
Coquerel's sifaka is a diurnal, medium-sized lemur of the sifaka genus Propithecus. It is native to northwest Madagascar. Coquerel's sifaka was once considered a subspecies of Verreaux's sifaka but was eventually granted full species status. It is listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List due to habitat loss and hunting.
The golden-crowned sifaka or Tattersall's sifaka is a medium-sized lemur characterized by mostly white fur, prominent furry ears, and a golden-orange crown. It is one of the smallest sifakas, weighing around 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) and measuring approximately 90 cm (35 in) from head to tail. Like all sifakas, it is a vertical clinger and leaper, and its diet includes mostly seeds and leaves. The golden-crowned sifaka is named after its discoverer, Ian Tattersall, who first spotted the species in 1974. However, it was not formally described until 1988, after a research team led by Elwyn L. Simons observed and captured some specimens for captive breeding. The golden-crowned sifaka most closely resembles the western forest sifakas of the P. verreauxi group, yet its karyotype suggests a closer relationship with the P. diadema group of eastern forest sifakas. Despite the similarities with both groups, more recent studies of its karyotype support its classification as a distinct species.
Anne C. Zeller is a physical anthropologist who specializes in the study of primates. She received her M.A. (1971) and Ph.D (1978) from the University of Toronto.
The silky sifaka is a large lemur characterized by long, silky, white fur. It has a very restricted range in northeastern Madagascar, where it is known locally as the simpona. It is one of the rarest mammals on Earth. The silky sifaka is one of nine sifaka species, and one of four former subspecies of diademed sifaka (P. diadema). Studies in 2004 and 2007 compared external proportions, genetics, and craniodental anatomy supporting full species status, which has generally been accepted.
The Kirindy Mitea National Park is a national park on the coast of the Mozambique Channel, in south-west Madagascar. The 72,200 hectares park contains many endemic animals and plants and claims to have the greatest density of primates in the world.
Perrier's sifaka is a lemur endemic to Madagascar. It was formerly considered to be a subspecies of diademed sifaka It has a very small range in northeastern Madagascar where its habitat is dry deciduous or semihumid forest. Part of its range is in protected areas. It is an almost entirely black sifaka and measures about 90 cm (35 in), half of which is a bushy tail. Females are slightly larger than males.
The crowned sifaka is a sifaka endemic to western Madagascar, a part of the world where nature and its biological diversity faces enormous and devastating consequences resulting from anthropogenic activities. It is a species of lemur belonging to the Indriidae family, it is of comparable size to the Golden-crowned sifaka and up to a meter in length, of which 47-57 centimeters are tail. The species is an arboreal vertical climber and leaper whose diet consists of leaves, fruits and flowers. It is threatened by habitat destruction caused by human activities and is currently classified as critically endangered by the IUCN. Conservation planning needs to take local people needs and views into account in order to be successful over the long term.
Mesopropithecus is an extinct genus of small to medium-sized lemur, or strepsirrhine primate, from Madagascar that includes three species, M. dolichobrachion, M. globiceps, and M. pithecoides. Together with Palaeopropithecus, Archaeoindris, and Babakotia, it is part of the sloth lemur family (Palaeopropithecidae). Once thought to be an indriid because its skull is similar to that of living sifakas, a recently discovered postcranial skeleton shows Mesopropithecus had longer forelimbs than hindlimbs—a distinctive trait shared by sloth lemurs but not by indriids. However, as it had the shortest forelimbs of all sloth lemurs, it is thought that Mesopropithecus was more quadrupedal and did not use suspension as much as the other sloth lemurs.
Milne-Edwards's sifaka, or Milne-Edwards's simpona, is a large arboreal, diurnal lemur endemic to the eastern coastal rainforest of Madagascar. Milne-Edwards's sifaka is characterized by a black body with a light-colored "saddle" on the lower part of its back. It is closely related to the diademed sifaka, and was until recently considered a subspecies of it. Like all sifakas, it is a primate in the family Indriidae.
The Madagascar succulent woodlands are a xeric shrublands ecoregion in southwestern and central western Madagascar. Native plants survive in the arid climate and long dry season with adaptations like succulent leaves, water storing trunks, photosynthetic stems, and dropping leaves during the dry season. The ecoregion is threatened by various human activities.
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