Symposium on Mahale.
Shigeo Uehara
Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University

More than 30 years have passed since Toshisada Nishida started the chimpanzee research at Kasoje, Mahale Mountains, western Tanzania in 1965. Supported by Grants-in-Aid for Center-of-Excellence (COE) Research from the Monbusho (Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Cultures) (#10CE2005 to O. Takenaka), a one-day symposium entitled "The long-term study of chimpanzees at Mahale since 1965" was held on 17th July, 1999 at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University, Inuyama, Japan. The present goals are twofold: to review the past research history and to pursue the future research directions. Since the space is limited, only the titles presented by respective speakers at the symposium are listed below: the program was organized by M. A. Huffman, K. Hosaka and S. U. All talks were given in Japanese.

  1. Study of Mahale chimpanzees in the early years of research with special reference to the history of alpha males (by Toshisada Nishida).
  2. Vegetation, food, nomadic patterns and group size: changes in M Group between 1975 and 1998 before and after the establishment of Mahale National Park (by Kohshi Norikoshi).
  3. Fruit food availability and chimpanzee party size (by Noriko Itoh).
  4. Diachronic changes in distribution and abundance of diurnal mammals (by Shigeo Uehara).
  5. Chimpanzee predatory behavior in Mahale: complementary analyses of long-term and short-term data (by Kazuhiko Hosaka).
  6. Habitat use of B Group (by Fumio Fukuda).
  7. My research plans for 1999-2000: short- distance communication among chimpanzees on the basis of face-to-face interactions (by Tetsuya Sakamaki).
  8. My research plans for 1999-2000: chimpan- zees and their ectoparasites (by Koichiroh Zamma).
  9. Female choice in opportunistic mating of wild chimpanzees at Mahale: the importance of long-term data analysis of reproductive behavior (Akiko Matsumoto-Oda).
  10. Testing Dunbar's hypothesis on the evolution of language: comparison of clique sizes during chimpanzee grooming and human conver- sation (by Michio Nakamura).
  11. A comparison of the self-medicative behavior "leaf-swallowing" between chimpanzees of Mahale, Tanzania and Budongo, Uganda (by Michael A. Huffman).

We hope that the scope of the Mahale chimpanzee research will further be deepened in the future, both through the comparative investigation with other long-term study sites across Africa and through the systematic approach to clarify interactions with various species constituting the Mahale ecosystem.
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