Jonah Ratsimbazafy is a Malagasy primatologist. In 2020, he was appointed President of the

International Primatological Society The International Primatological Society (IPS) is a scientific, educational, and charitable organization focused on non-human primates. It encourages scientific research in all areas of study, facilitates international cooperation among researcher ...

Life and research

Ratsimbazafy received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from the

State University of New York at Stony Brook Stony Brook University (SBU), officially the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is a public university, public research university in Stony Brook, New York, United States, on Long Island. Along with the University at Buffalo, it is on ...

in Physical Anthropology in 2002, and afterwards became Training and Conservation Coordinator for

Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust is a conservation organization with a mission to save species from extinction. Gerald Durrell founded the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust as a charitable institution in 1963 with the dodo as its symbol. Th ...

in Madagascar. He has published over 170 papers and supervised over 65 students, including 20 PhD students. His main field of study is

lemur Lemurs ( ; from Latin ) are Strepsirrhini, wet-nosed primates of the Superfamily (biology), superfamily Lemuroidea ( ), divided into 8 Family (biology), families and consisting of 15 genera and around 100 existing species. They are Endemism, ...

ecology and conservation. Ratsimbazafy is Co-founder and President of the Madagascar Primate Study and Research Group (GERP), Houston Zoo's Director of Madagascar Programs, and Regional Vice-Chair of the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group for Madagascar. He is also one of the advisors of the Lemur Conservation Network and sits on the administrative board of SADABE, an

NGO A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

. In 2020, Ratsimbazafy was elected President of the

for a four-year term.

Honours and awards

In 2015, Ratsimbazafy was awarded

Disney The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...

's Conservation Hero Award. In 2017, Ratsimbazafy was elected as a member of the

African Academy of Sciences The African Academy of Sciences (AAS) is a non-aligned, non-political, not-for-profit, pan-African learned society formed in 1985. The AAS elects fellows ( FAAS) and affiliates. The AAS also awards the Obasanjo Prize for Scientific Discovery a ...

. In 2023, he was the recipient of the

Seacology Seacology is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) charitable organization headquartered in Berkeley, California, that works to preserve island ecosystems and cultures around the world. Founded in 1991, it began with the work of ethnobotanist Paul Alan Cox, ...

Prize, which is awarded annually to individuals with significant achievements in preserving island ecosystems, species, or cultures. In 2020, a new species of

mouse lemur The mouse lemurs are nocturnal lemurs of the genus ''Microcebus''. Like all lemurs, mouse lemurs are native to Madagascar. Mouse lemurs have a combined head, body and tail length of and weigh , making them the smallest primates (the smallest sp ...

, ''

Microcebus jonahi ''Microcebus jonahi'', or Jonah's mouse lemur, is a tiny species of primate. It weighs and has a body length of around and its tail measures around 13 cm as well. It is the 25th recognized species of mouse lemur and the 108th recognized sp ...

'', was named in honour to Jonah Ratsimbazafy.Poelstra, Salmona, Tiley et al., 2021.

Notes

References

* Schüßler, D., Blanco, M. B., Salmona, J., Poelstra, J., Andriambeloson, J. B., Miller, A., ... & Radespiel, U. (2020). Ecology and morphology of mouse lemurs (Microcebus spp.) in a hotspot of microendemism in northeastern Madagascar, with the description of a new species. American Journal of Primatology, 82(9), e23180. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ajp.23180 * Poelstra, J. W., Salmona, J., Tiley, G. P., Schüßler, D., Blanco, M. B., Andriambeloson, J. B., ... & Yoder, A. D. (2021). Cryptic patterns of speciation in cryptic primates: microendemic mouse lemurs and the multispecies coalescent. Systematic Biology, 70(2), 203-218. https://academic.oup.com/sysbio/article/70/2/203/5869053?login=true Primatologists Malagasy scientists Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Stony Brook University alumni Fellows of the African Academy of Sciences {{Zoologist-stub