Publicaties

In southern Bahia, Brazil, rapid deforestation of the Atlantic Forest threatens a variety of endemic wildlife, including the Endangered golden-headed lion tamarin (GHLT; Leontopithecus chrysomelas) and the Near Threatened Wied’s black-tufted-ear marmoset (Wied’s marmoset; Callithrix kuhlii). Identifying high quality areas in the landscape is critical for mounting efficient conservation programs for these primates. We constructed ecological niche ...

Human language is a fundamentally cooperative enterprise, embodying fast-paced and extended social interactions. It has been suggested that it evolved as part of a larger adaptation of humans’ species-unique forms of cooperation. Although our closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, show general cooperative abilities, their communicative interactions seem to lack the cooperative nature of human conversation. Here, we revisited this ...

Parasite prevalence and abundance are important factors affecting species’ conservation. During necropsies on a free-living golden-headed lion tamarin (Leontopithecus chrysomelas) and two Wied’s marmosets (Callithrix kuhlii) in the Atlantic Forest of southern Bahia, Brazil, we collected a large number of adult intestinal parasites that we identified as Prosthenorchis elegans. This parasite is pathogenic for Neotropical primates. Prosthenorchis ...

The study of the archaeological remains of fossil hominins must rely on reconstructions to elucidate the behaviour that may have resulted in particular stone tools and their accumulation. Comparatively, stone tool use among living primates has illuminated behaviours that are also amenable to archaeological examination, permitting direct observations of the behaviour leading to artefacts and their assemblages to be incorporated. Here, we describe ...

Long-term social recognition is vital for species with complex social networks, where familiar individuals can encounter one another after long periods of separation. For non-human primates who live in dense forest environments, visual access to one another is often limited, and recognition of social partners over distances largely depends on vocal communication. Vocal recognition after years of separation has never been reported in any great ...

Babirusa (genus Babyrousa), wild pigs from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and neighbouring small islands, most obviously differ from other wild pigs in that the maxillary (upper) canine teeth of the males pierce through the skin of the nose and curl over the forehead. The females sometimes show small teeth piercing through the nasal skin. The process of anatomical growth of these maxillary
canine teeth and the remodelling of the alveolar ...

Food transfers are often hypothesised to have played a role in the evolution of cooperation amongst humans. However, they also occur in non-human primates, though no consensus exists regarding their function(s). We document patterns of begging for food and success rates as well as associated factors that may influence them for wild bonobos at LuiKotale, Democratic Republic of Congo. Our data, collected over 1074 observation hours, focus on 260 ...

There is increasing interest in the characterization of normative senescence in humans. To assess to what extent aging patterns in humans are unique, comparative data from closely related species, such as non-human primates, can be very useful. Here, we use data from bonobos and chimpanzees, two closely related species that share a common ancestor with humans, to explore physiological markers that are indicative of aging processes. Many studies ...

It has long been hypothesized that polyomaviruses (PyV; family Polyomaviridae) codiverged with their animal hosts. In contrast, recent analyses suggested that codivergence may only marginally influence the evolution of PyV. We reassess this question by focusing on a single lineage of PyV infecting hominine hosts, the Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCPyV) lineage. By characterizing the genetic diversity of these viruses in seven African great ape ...