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My friend and former PhD supervisor David Chivers, who has died aged 81, was an expert on the lesser apes or gibbons, and a primatology lecturer for more than 40 years at Cambridge University while also carrying out research in the forests of south-east Asia and elsewhere.

Most of his 50 PhD students were from countries where wild primates can be found. They often went on to lead conservation projects in their own countries, training others and setting up reserves to save whole ecosystems containing primates and thousands of other wild species.

From the 1980s to the 2000s, David also had leadership roles with the Primate Society of Great Britain (as president), Fauna and Flora International (as vice-chair of its council and conservation committee) and the International Primatological Society (as vice-president for conservation).

He was born in Bicester, Oxfordshire, to Rina (nee Steel), a teacher, and Felix, a chartered accountant. Brought up in nearby Marsh Gibbon, he attended Merchant Taylors’ school in Northwood, Middlesex, before studying veterinary science and physical anthropology at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, graduating in 1966.

He then enrolled at Cambridge for a PhD, for which he went to Panama to explore the social purposes of roaring calls uttered by howler monkeys, and Malaya (now Malaysia) to find out why family groups of siamang gibbons produce their astonishing barking and screaming songs each morning.

After gaining his PhD in 1972, David taught veterinary anatomy and primatology at Cambridge until his retirement in 2016, by which time he was a professor. Over the years he published a number of accounts of his field research collaborations in Malaysia and Indonesia, which mainly focused on the interplay between primate gut morphology, diet and ecology.

David never lost his energy, humour or his protective instincts towards his global brood of conservationists whom he had nurtured through their PhDs – and we loved him for it. For his 80th birthday more than half his doctoral students met at Selwyn College, and almost all of them then co-authored with David a summary of what we had learned since the 70s on how to protect primates and why.

David is survived by his second wife, Christine (nee Mitchell), a legal assistant, whom he married in 1983, their three children, James, John and Joseph, a daughter, Katy, from his first marriage to Sarah (nee Black), which ended in divorce, two stepchildren from Christine’s previous marriage, Daniel and Rebecca, and five grandchildren, Georgia, Toby, Oliver, Isabella and Emmeline.