Lynne A Isbell

Lynne A. Isbell (born 1955) is an American ethologist and primatologist, and Distinguished Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis.

Isbell has served as president of the American Society of Primatologists and is the originator of the snake detection theory, which suggests that snakes have contributed to the evolution of the visual system of primates.

Early life Isbell grew up in Compton, California. The title refers to Straight Outta Compton, an album by N.W.A.

Isbell's focus on primates came after moving to Davis, California, when she volunteered to work on a year-long behavioral project with captive bonnet macaques.

Apart from Isbell's long-term fieldwork in Kenya and Uganda, she has also carried out shorter-term work in Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and Rwanda.

Honours W. W. Howells Book Award for Biological Anthropology, American Anthropological Association, 2014 Primates 2020 Most Cited Paper Award (with S. F. Etting), 2017 President-Elect, American Society of Primatologists, 2018–2020 Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

Selected publications "Ants on swollen-thorn acacias: species coexistence in a simple system" Oecologia 109:1 (December 1996), 98–107 "Diet for a small primate: Insectivory and gummivory in the (large) patas monkey (Erythrocebus patas pyrrhonotus)", American Journal of Primatology 45:4 (1998), 381–398 "Is there no place like home? Ecological bases of dispersal in primates and their consequences for the formation of kin groups" in B. Chapais and C. Berman, eds., Kinship and Behavior in Primates (Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 71–108 "Snakes as agents of evolutionary change in primate brains", Journal of Human Evolution, 51:1 (1 July 2006), 1–35 The Fruit, the Tree, and the Serpent: Why We See So Well (New York: Harvard University Press, 2009, ) "Demography and Life Histories of Sympatric Patas Monkeys, Erythrocebus patas, and Vervets, Cercopithecus aethiops, in Laikipia, Kenya", International Journal of Primatology 30:1 (2009), 103–124 "Decline in the geographical range of the southern patas monkey Erythrocebus patas baumstarki in Tanzania Kenya", Oryx 43:2 (April 2009), 267–274 "Factors influencing hair loss among female captive rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta)", Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 119:1–2 (2009), 91–100 "Pulvinar neurons reveal neurobiological evidence of past selection for rapid detection of snakes" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110 (2013), 19000–19005 "Large carnivores make savanna tree communities less thorny" in Science 346 (2014), 346–349 "GPS-identified vulnerabilities of savannah-woodland primates to leopard predation and their implications for early hominins", Journal of Human Evolution 118 (2018), 1–13 "Absentee owners and overlapping home ranges in a territorial species", Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 75 (2021), 21 L. A. Isbell, R. Pantaleon, B. Bradshaw, Black, Brown, and White: Stories Straight Outta Compton (Davis, California: Bobely Books, 2022)