Claude primarily focuses on wildlife ecology, conservation, and infectious disease surveillance, with a particular emphasis on bats. Wildlife Ecology and Conservation: He uses bat functional traits—such as flight and dispersal ability, acoustic signals, and genetic diversity—as tools to address evolutionary questions. His research investigates how environmental factors, including forest structure, topography, temperature, and rainfall, shape patterns of bat adaptation across Afrotropical landscapes. As part of wildlife conservation efforts, he is studying population trends and the conservation status of the endangered Kisangani red colobus (Piliocolobus langi), also known as Lang’s red colobus, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Infectious Disease Surveillance: He is focused on the inhabited forest regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where emerging infectious diseases such as orthopoxviruses and filoviruses are thought to circulate periodically among wildlife populations. He is developing a comprehensive, integrated approach combining bat surveys and large mammal monitoring to improve our understanding of how changes in biodiversity influence the risk of zoonotic disease spillover.
