Isabelle Szott

Thesis: The impact of wildlife tourism on elephants, Loxodonta africana, in South Africa.

Research Interests

I am interested in behavioural ecology of elephants. Specifically, I study how non-consumptive wildlife tourism affects free-ranging African elephants in a national park in South Africa. For my research I use a range of techniques including behavioural observations, assessment of various hormones from dung samples and movement data from GPS collars. Such research can guide and inform management of tourism in national parks in order to maintain high welfare standards and reduce negative effects of tourism on animals.

Previously, I have studied how specific genotypes are related to attention biases in Rhesus macaques, ex Situ. This included analysis of DNA samples to assess individuals’ genotypes, experimental data collection of attention bias data and behavioural observations. This MPhil research was part of a larger project to develop a method with which we can assess changes in welfare states in captive primates non-invasively at an early stage. 

Associations