Alison Jolly

She wrote several books for both popular and scientific audiences and conducted extensive fieldwork on Lemurs in Madagascar, primarily at the Berenty Reserve, a small private reserve of gallery forest set in the semi-arid spiny desert area in the far south of Madagascar.

[3] Jolly began studying lemur behavior at Berenty in 1963[4][5][6] and was first to propose female dominance in a primate society.

She encouraged field studies that contributed to knowledge about Malagasy wildlife and advised many researchers; she briefed Jane Wilson-Howarth and colleagues before their first expedition to Madagascar in 1981.

[7] She focused on ring-tailed lemur demography, ranging, and especially inter-troop and territorial behavior, in the context of the fivefold difference in population density from front to back of the reserve.

In June 2006, a new species of mouse lemur, Microcebus jollyae, was named in Jolly's honor.