High temperatures are associated with decreased immune system performance in a wild primate.

Rising temperatures due to climate change are predicted to threaten the persistence of wild animals, but there is little evidence that climate change has pushed species beyond their thermal tolerance. The immune system is an ideal avenue to assess the effects of climate change because immune performance is sensitive to changes in temperature and immune competency can affect reproductive success. We investigate the effect of rising temperatures on a biomarker of nonspecific immune performance in a wild population of capuchin monkeys and provide compelling evidence that immune performance is associated with ambient temperature.

Behavioural compatibility, not fear, best predicts the looking patterns of chacma baboons.

Animal vigilance is often investigated under a narrow set of scenarios, but this approach may overestimate its contribution to animal lives. A solution may be to sample all looking behaviours and investigate numerous competing hypotheses in a single analysis. In this study, using a wild group of habituated chacma baboons (Papio ursinus griseipes) as a model system, we implemented a framework for predicting the key drivers of looking by comparing the strength of a full array of biological hypotheses.

Intolerant baboons avoid observer proximity, creating biased inter-individual association patterns.

Social network analysis is an increasingly popular tool for behavioural ecologists exploring the social organisation of animal populations. Such analyses require data on inter-individual association patterns, which in wild populations are often collected using direct observations of habituated animals. This assumes observers have no influence on animal behaviour; however, our previous work showed that individuals in a habituated group of chacma baboons (Papio ursinus griseipes) displayed consistent and individually distinct responses to observer approaches.