Rhianna Drummond-Clarke
Postdoc
Department of Human Origins
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6
04103 Leipzig
e-mail: rhianna_drummond_clarke@[>>> Please remove the text! <<<]eva.mpg.de
Research Interests
Curriculum vitae
Projects and Partners
Publications
Research Interests
Rhianna’s research focuses on quantifying wild chimpanzee ecomorphology in the dry and open extreme of their range, using comparative techniques to improve our understanding of the selective pressures that may have shaped early hominin evolution in similar habitats. She is particularly interested in questions around the adaptive significance of features suited to climbing in fossil hominins, and the role of the arboreal niche in human evolution. Rhianna’s postdoctoral project aims to improve our understanding of the full diversity of climbing behaviours in wild chimpanzees. She will quantify chimpanzee climbing biomechanics on diverse and novel substrates, including rock faces, using camera traps and photogrammetry. Rhianna is currently collecting data at two savannah-mosaic sites – Issa Valley in Tanzania, and Moyen Bafing National Park in Guinea. This work will help us understand how climbing and walking may have coexisted in our evolutionary past, and what role challenging terrain may have played in shaping the unique combination of traits seen in the human skeleton.
Curriculum vitae
Link to GoogleDocs
Career and Education:
| 2025 | Postdoctoral researcher, Department of Human Origins, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology |
| 2021-2025 | PhD student, Dep. Human Origins, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology & Institute of Zoology and Evolutionary Research, University of Jena. |
| 2009-2013 | M. Sci. Palaeobiology, University College London |
Research Experience:
Fieldwork
| 2024, 2025 | Researcher, Moyen Bafing Chimpanzee project (Moyen Bafing National Park, Guinea) |
| 2020, 2023 | Researcher, Greater Mahale Ecosystem Research and Conservation (Issa Valley, Tanzania) |
| 2020 | Assistant manager, Greater Mahale Ecosystem Research and Conservation (Issa Valley, Tanzania) |
| 2016, 2019 | Field assistant/ chimpanzee caretaker, The Chimpanzee Conservation Centre, (Guinea) |
| 2017 | Research assistant, Comoé Chimpanzee Conservation Project (Ivory Coast) |
| 2013 | Excavation Batallones site three, Late Miocene (Spain) |
| 2012 | Excavation Swabian Jura Project, Hohle Fels, Middle Palaeolithic (Germany) |
Teaching
| 2023 | Supervisionof a Tanzanian graduate research assistant during fieldwork at GMERC |
| 2021-2023 | Post-Graduate teaching assistant, School of Anthropology, University College London |
Scientific outreach
| 2023 | School visits, organising and delivering workshops on chimpanzee conservation and research to 10-13year olds (Uvinza and Kigoma, Tanzania) |
| 2023 | Gueston The AnthroBiology Podcast |
| 2020-present | Social media team member, Projet Primates France/ Project Primates Inc. |
| 2019 | Podium presentation “You, Me and Chimpanzees”, Bitesize talk series at The Brighton Museum (Brighton, UK). |
| 2017 | Podium presentation “Life at the Chimpanzee Conservation Centre”, Bitesize talk series at The Brighton Museum (Brighton, UK). |
| 2011-2013 | Assistant Scientific Educator, The Grant Museum of Zoology (London UK). |
Research awards and funding:
| 2023 | Leakey foundation research grant, for project entitled “Ecological drivers of bipedalism and arboreality in savanna-dwelling chimpanzees” |
Languages:
English (native), French (advanced), Swahili (intermediate), German (beginner)
Projects and Partners
I am currently conducting my PhD research on the positional behaviour and ecology of chimpanzees of the Issa Valley, western Tanzania, in collaboration with Greater Mahale Ecosystem Research and Conservation (GMERC) Ltd.
Publications
2025
Robbins, M. M., Drummond-Clarke, R. C., Robbins, A. M., Ostrofsky, K. R., & Kivell, T. L.(2025). Gorillas are arboreal apes. Current Biology,35(12): e3, pp. 2974-2979. | |
Drummond-Clarke, R. C.(2025). Positional behaviour of chimpanzees living in the savannah-mosaic habitat of Issa Valley, western Tanzania. PhD Thesis, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Jena. | |
Drummond-Clarke, R. C., Reuben, S. C., Stewart, F. A., Piel, A. K., & Kivell, T. L.(2025). Foraging strategy and tree structure as drivers of arboreality and suspensory behaviour in savannah-dwelling chimpanzees. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution,13: 1561078. |
Open Access2024
Drummond-Clarke, R. C., Kivell, T. L., Sarringhaus, L., Stewart, F. A., & Piel, A. K.(2024). Sex differences in positional behavior of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) living in the dry and open habitat ofIssa Valley, Tanzania. American journal of biological anthropology,185(3): e25007. |
2023
Drummond-Clarke, R. C.(2023). Bringing trees back into the human evolutionary story: Recent evidence from extant great apes. Communicative & Integrative Biology,16(1): 2193001. | |
Drummond-Clarke, R. C., Fryns, C., Stewart, F. A., & Piel, A. K.(2023). A case of intercommunity lethal aggression by chimpanzees in an open and dry landscape, Issa Valley, western Tanzania. Primates,64(6), 599-608. |
2022
Drummond-Clarke R. C., Kivell T. L., Sarringhaus L., Stewart F. A., Humle T., Piel A. K., (2022) Wild chimpanzee behavior suggests that a savanna-mosaic habitat did not support the emergence of hominin terrestrial bipedalism, Science Advances 8, add9752.
DOI
2021
Fryns C., Badihi G., Crunchant A. S., Drummond-Clarke R. C., Howell C., Stewart F. A., & Piel A. K., (2021) Interactions between chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) and cattle (Bos taurus) in the Issa Valley, Western Tanzania, African Primates 15, 19-30.
Meeting abstracts
Drummond-Clarke R. C., Reuben S. C., Kivell T. L., Stewart F. A., Piel A. K.,Foraging strategy and tree structure as drivers of terminal branch locomotion in savannah chimpanzees: Implications for the emergence of hominin bipedalism. 14th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Evolution (ESHE) annual meeting, Zagreb, Croatia, September 2024 [Poster Presentation].
Drummond-Clarke R. C., Reuben S. C., Kivell T. L., Stewart F. A., Piel A. K.,Foraging strategy and tree structure as drivers of arboreality and suspensory locomotion in savannah chimpanzees. 10th biannual meeting of the European Federation for Primatology (EFP), Lausanne, Switzerland, June 2024 [Poster Presentation].
Drummond-Clarke R. C., Kivell T. L., Sarringhaus L., Stewart F. A., Piel A. K.,Sex differences inpositional behavior of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) living in the dry and open habitat of Issa Valley, Tanzania. The American Association of Biological Anthropology (AABA) annual meeting, Los Angeles, CA, March 2024 [Podium Presentation].
Reuben S. C., Drummond-Clarke R. C., Impact of fires on foraging behaviors of chimpanzees in the Issa Valley, Tanzania: range and vegetation use. The TAWIRI Scientific Conference, December 2023 [Poster presentation].
Drummond-Clarke R. C., Kivell T. L., Sarringhaus L., Stewart F. A., Humle T., Piel A. K., Positional behaviour of chimpanzees living in the savannah-mosaic environment of Issa Valley, Tanzania: Insights to the origins of human bipedalism. The European Society for the study of Human Evolution (ESHE) Tübingen, Germany, September 2022. [Podium Presentation].
Drummond-Clarke R. C., Kivell T. L., Sarringhaus L., Stewart F. A., Humle T., Piel A. K., (2021) Locomotor Behaviour of Chimpanzees living in the savannah-mosaic environment of Issa Valley, Tanzania. The Primate Society of Great Britain (PSGB)Winter meeting. [Podium Presentation].