Publicaties

Background: Expansion of brain tissue and development of advanced cognitive skills are characteristic traits of human evolution. Their emergence has been causally linked to the intake of nutrients that promote brain development and iodine is considered a critical resource. Rich sources of iodine exist in coastal areas and evolutionary scenarios associate the progressive development of brain size and cognitive skills to such landscapes. This ...

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that plays an important role in regulating behavior and personality in humans and other mammals. Polymorphisms in genes coding for the serotonin receptor subtype 1A (HTR1A), the serotonin transporter (SLC6A4), and the serotonin degrading enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) are associated with anxiety, impulsivity, and neurotic personality in humans. In primates, previous research has largely focused on SLC6A4 and ...

Kalan et al. use a large-scale field experiment to assess the reaction of wild great apes toward a novel object: camera trap devices. Bonobos show the strongest looking impulse and are more neophobic than either gorillas or chimpanzees. Additional social and environmental effects on reactions demonstrate the complexities of animal curiosity.

Chimpanzees possess a large number of behavioral and cultural traits among nonhuman species. The ``disturbance hypothesis'' predicts that human impact depletes resources and disrupts social learning processes necessary for behavioral and cultural transmission. We used a dataset of 144 chimpanzee communities, with information on 31 behaviors, to show that chimpanzees inhabiting areas with high human impact have a mean probability of occurrence ...

Climate change is a threat to natural ecosystems. To evaluate this threat and, where possible, respond, it is useful to understand the potential impacts climate change could have on species' distributions, phenology, and productivity. Here, we compare future-scenario outcomes between a dynamic vegetation model (DVM; CARbon Assimilation In the Biosphere (CARAIB)) and an ecological niche-based model (ENM; maximum entropy model) to outline the ...

Cultural evolution is the product of the psychological mechanisms that underlie individual decision making. One commonly studied learning mechanism is a disproportionate preference for majority opinions, known as conformist transmission. While most theoretical and experimental work approaches the majority in terms of the number of individuals that perform a behaviour or hold a belief, some recent experimental studies approach the majority in ...

Background: Ecological immunology proposes that the optimal immune defence, and the costs coming with it, vary across environments. In environments with higher pathogen load, the immune system should experience greater challenges and, therefore, investment in maintaining it should be higher. The biomarker neopterin allows monitoring of innate immune responses, and is therefore an ideal tool to investigate the effects of ecological variables on ...