Publicaties

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 ...

Summary In many group-living mammals, mothers may increase the reproductive success of their daughters even after they are nutritionally independent and fully grown [1]. However, whether such maternal effects exist for adult sons is largely unknown. Here we show that males have higher paternity success when their mother is living in the group at the time of the offspring’s conception in bonobos (N = 39 paternities from 4 groups) but not in ...

Tapirs have historically been considered as ecologically analogous to several groups of extinct perissodactyls based on dental and locomotor morphology. Here, we investigate comparative functional morphology between living tapirs and endemic Eocene European perissodactyls to ascertain whether tapirs represent viable analogues for locomotion in palaeotheres and lophiodontids. Forelimb bones from 20 species of Eocene European perissodactyls were ...

Abstract The current extinction and climate change crises pressure us to predict population dynamics with ever-greater accuracy. Although predictions rest on the well-advanced theory of age-structured populations, two key issues remain poorly explored. Specifically, how the age-dependency in demographic rates and the year-to-year interactions between survival and fecundity affect stochastic population growth rates. We use inference, simulations ...

From 2006 through 2014, we conducted seroepidemiological surveys on non-human primates and sloths to investigate the possible circulation of arboviruses in Bahia Atlantic Forest, Brazil. We collected a total of 196 samples from 103 Leontopithecus chrysomelas, 7 Sapajus xanthosternos, 22 Bradypus torquatus and 7 Bradypus variegatus. Serum samples were tested using neutralization test and hemagglutination inhibition test to detect total antibodies ...

There have been several important outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases in the Neotropics in recent years, particularly in Brazil. Some taxa are also considered to be indicators of environmental health. Despite the importance of understanding insect abundance and distribution to the understanding of disease dynamics and design strategies to manage them, very little is known about their ecology in many tropical regions. We studied the abundance ...

To clarify the role of bats in the ecology of Ebola viruses, we assessed the prevalence of Ebola virus antibodies in a large-scale sample of bats collected during 2015-2017 from countries in Africa that have had previous Ebola out- breaks (Guinea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo) or are at high risk for outbreaks (Cameroon). We analyzed 4,022 blood samples of bats from >= 12 frugivorous and 27 insectivorous species; 2-37 (0.050.92 bats ...

The inertial properties of body segments reflect performance and locomotor habits in primates. While Pan paniscus is generally described as more gracile, lighter in body mass, and as having relatively longer and heavier hindlimbs than Pan troglodytes, both species exhibit very similar patterns of (quadrupedal and bipedal) kinematics, but show slightly different locomotor repertoires. We used a geometric model to estimate the inertial properties ...