Neuron Expedition — the occurrence of the uakari primate in Venezuela, 2017

9 June 2017

Jan Dungel set off on the expedition at the end of March 2017 and his journey lasted more than a month. The members of his expedition team were the photographer Radana Dungelová, the cameraman Vladimír Šimek and local assistants. Professor Jean P. Boubli (University of Salford, United Kingdom) also collaborated externally. Jan Dungel received support from the Neuron Endowment Fund for 2017 amounting to CZK 439,000.

Jan Dungel ended his expedition successfully: in the heart of the Amazon he rediscovered and described a long-forgotten primate, the uakari!

About the expedition

On his journey to Venezuela in 1800, Alexander von Humboldt discovered a short-tailed primate that was later described as Cacajao melanocephalus (Humboldt, 1811). With one disputed exception, this species was never encountered again in Venezuela, and our knowledge of the occurrence and distribution of primates in this country is still very incomplete. The Uakari Expedition, which took place in the spring of 2017, was the culmination of several years of research north of the Neblina mountains and on the right bank of the Brazo Casiquiare river, from where von Humboldt's holotype was said to have come. Our team managed to obtain DNA samples and, in cooperation with J. P. Boubli of the University of Salford in Manchester, to demonstrate and document unambiguously for the first time:

1) The occurrence of two species of uakari (the Neblina uakari Cacajao hosomi and the black-headed uakari C. melanocephalus),
2) that the recorded occurrence of the uakari with a golden-yellow back — that is, of the species C. melanocephalus — on the right bank of the Casiquiare supports the theory that von Humboldt's holotype was of the same species,
3) that the boundary of the distribution of the two species is the Brazo Casiquiare river and the Rio Negro further south in Venezuela,
4) new findings about the biology of the behaviour and the ecological relationships of the uakari,
5) Radana Dungelová captured the uakari in the wild in southern Venezuela photographically,
6) Vladimír Šimek captured their occurrence and behaviour in their natural environment in a documentary film.

Members of the expedition

Jan Dungel

He was born on 23 March 1951. He studied biology at the Faculty of Science of Masaryk University in Brno. After graduating he worked briefly at the Institute of Biophysics of the Academy of Sciences. He then chose a career as a freelance artist. He focuses especially on themes from nature and on scientific illustration. To date he has illustrated some fifty books, which have been published not only in the Czech Republic but also in the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, France, Hungary, Colombia, Venezuela and elsewhere. The book "Do we behave like animals?" with his illustrations was honoured by the Ministry of Culture and the Museum of Czech Literature with the title Most Beautiful Book of 1992. He works with theatres, musicians and architects and does not shy away from commercial design either. He illustrates fairy tales for children, fiction and magazines. Jan Dungel has presented his free work at many group and solo exhibitions in the Czech Republic and abroad. Since 1992 he has regularly visited South America, where he paints animals and plants in their natural environment. He places emphasis on authenticity and precise documentation.

Radana Dungelová

A photographer of animals in their natural environment. With her husband, the painter of wild animals Jan Dungel, she organises expeditions into the wilderness. Accompanied by Indian friends they explore rainforests in a number of places in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Colombia and elsewhere. They shared their experiences, drawings and photographs from southern Venezuela in the book Up to Our Necks in the Rainforest and in the television documentaries With Brush and Machete (2008) and Uakari (2018). Radana has published photographs in magazines and in the books How to Paint a Rainforest (Academia 2006), Up to Our Necks in the Rainforest (Euromedia 2009), Jungle in the Middle of the Swamps (Extra Publishing 2013) and The Jaguar Doesn't Eat People (Barrister and Principal 2017).

Vladimír Šimek

Director, dramaturg, cameraman, producer and traveller. Author of a number of travel films and programmes — the series about Czechs abroad Czech Traces, records of Jan Dungel's expeditions With Brush and Machete, Where the Amazon Rises, Uakari, Humboldt's Lost Monkey and others. In the past he organised and took part in several significant expeditions including Hatun Mayu, which in 1999 and 2000 determined the sources of the Amazon.