Many animals face significant challenges in locating and acquiring resources that are unevenly distributed in space and time. In the case of nonhuman primates, it remains unclear how individuals remember goal locations and whether they navigate using a route-based or a coordinate-based mental representation when moving between out-of-sight feeding and resting sites (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn many primate species, nest raiding is a form of opportunistic foraging behavior designed to acquire protein-rich eggs and nestlings. In urban environments, this is a significant cause of nest failure in birds. Here, we describe nest raiding and egg predation in bonnet macaques (Macaca radiata) inhabiting a suburban area of Salem, Tamil Nadu, India.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe gut microbiota plays a crucial role in regulating energy metabolism, facilitating nutrient absorption, and supporting immune function, thereby assisting the host in adapting to seasonal dietary changes. Here, we compare the gut microbiome composition of wild gray snub-nosed monkeys during winter (from October to December) and spring (from January to March) to understand differences in seasonal nutrient intake patterns. Snub-nosed monkeys are foregut fermenters and consume difficult-to-digest carbohydrates and lichen.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: The gut microbiome has the potential to buffer temporal variations in resource availability and consumption, which may play a key role in the ability of animals to adapt to a broad range of habitats. We investigated the temporal composition and function of the gut microbiomes of wild common marmosets () exploiting a hot, dry environment-Caatinga-in northeastern Brazil. We collected fecal samples during two time periods (July-August and February-March) for 2 years from marmosets belonging to eight social groups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhenolics, like tannins, are plant-specialized metabolites that play a protective role against herbivory. Tannins can reduce palatability and bind with proteins to reduce digestibility, acting as deterrents to feeding and impacting nutrient extraction by herbivores. Some assays measure tannin and total phenolics content in plants but lack determination of their biological effects, hindering the interpretation of tannin function in herbivory and its impacts on animal behavior and ecology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCommunity Dent Oral Epidemiol
October 2024
The concept of childhood has evolved over the years, inspired by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989, shifting from developmental models to a conception of childhood that recognizes children as moral agents. This evolution highlights the importance of respecting children's agency and their right to be heard in matters that are related to them. In conventional health research, however, children's voices are often inadequately accessed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNonhuman primates and their habitats are facing an impending extinction crisis. Approximately 69% of primate species are listed by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as threatened and 93% have declining populations. Human population growth (expected to reach 10.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman activity and climate change affect biodiversity and cause species range shifts, contractions, and expansions. Globally, human activities and climate change have emerged as persistent threats to biodiversity, leading to approximately 68% of the ~522 primate species being threatened with extinction. Here, we used habitat suitability models and integrated data on human population density, gross domestic product (GDP), road construction, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), the location of protected areas (PAs), and climate change to predict potential changes in the distributional range and richness of 26 China's primate species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSong coordination is a universal characteristic of human music. Many animals also produce well-coordinated duets or choruses that resemble human music. However, the mechanism and evolution of song coordination have only recently been studied in animals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInherent differences in the adaptive capacity of species to flexibly respond to extreme climatic events (ECEs) represent a key factor in their survivorship. We introduce and apply a conceptual framework linking knowledge about species' current ecology and biology with variation in behavioral flexibility to ECEs. We applied it to 199 non-human primate species currently exposed to cyclones across the global tropics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProvisioning can significantly affect the ranging patterns, foraging strategies, and time budget of wild primates. In this study, we document for the first time, the effects of provisioning on the activity budget and foraging effort in an Asian colobine. Over 3-years, we used an instantaneous scanning method at 10-min intervals to collect data on the activity budget of a semiprovisioned breeding band (SPB) of black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys (Rhinopithecus bieti) (42-70 individuals) at Xiangguqing (Tacheng), Yunnan, China.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrimates are facing an impending extinction crisis. Here, we examine the set of conservation challenges faced by the 100 primate species that inhabit the Brazilian Amazon, the largest remaining area of primary tropical rainforest in the world. The vast majority (86%) of Brazil's Amazonian primate species have declining populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExploring wild reservoirs of pathogenic viruses is critical for their long-term control and for predicting future pandemic scenarios. Here, a comparative in vitro infection analysis was first performed on 83 cell cultures derived from 55 mammalian species using pseudotyped viruses bearing S proteins from SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV. Cell cultures from Thomas's horseshoe bats, king horseshoe bats, green monkeys, and ferrets were found to be highly susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV pseudotyped viruses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHainan gibbons are among the world's most critically endangered primates, with a remaining population of only 35 individuals distributed across 5 social groups in the Bawangling Branch of the Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park, China. Habitat conversion and forest fragmentation over the past 40 years have reduced their geographical distribution by 95%. In the absence of a quantitative assessment of the availability of remaining suitable habitat, it is unclear whether this species can survive to the end of this century.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrimates, represented by 521 species, are distributed across 91 countries primarily in the Neotropic, Afrotropic, and Indo-Malayan realms. Primates inhabit a wide range of habitats and play critical roles in sustaining healthy ecosystems that benefit human and nonhuman communities. Approximately 68% of primate species are threatened with extinction because of global pressures to convert their habitats for agricultural production and the extraction of natural resources.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdult males living in a one-male multi-female social group are expected to try to monopolize copulations with resident females to increase reproductive fitness. Gibbons have traditionally been described as living in monogamous groups, with the sole resident adult male assumed to sire all of the group's offspring. Here, we used microsatellite analyses and behavioral observations to examine rates of extra-group paternity (EGP) over 16 years in a population of crested gibbons (Nomascus concolor) that form stable and long-term one-male two-female social units.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReducing conflict between humans and wildlife is considered a top conservation priority. However, increasingly human-induced disturbances across natural landscapes have escalated encounters between humans and wildlife. In Nepal, forests have been destroyed, fragmented, and developed for human settlements, agricultural production, and urban centers for decades.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Marfan syndrome (MFS) is an autosomal dominant multisystem connective tissue disorder with increased risk of aortopathy with a high risk of subsequent life-threatening aortic dissection. Diagnosing this condition is reliant on recognizing clinical features and genetic testing for confirming diagnosis, using the revised Ghent criteria.
Case Summary: We identified a 49-year-old patient who presented with dyspnoea, with Marfan syndrome (MFS) and a previously unreported variant in the fibrillin-1 gene (), designated c.
Understanding flexibility in the social structure and mating strategies of the world's last remaining population (35 individuals) of wild Hainan gibbons (Nomascus hainanus) is critical for developing effective management plans to aid in their population recovery. Three of the five remaining Hainan gibbon groups (A, B, and C) currently live in a social unit characterized by two or three adult males, two reproducing adult females, and offspring. A fourth group (D) contains one adult male, two adult females, and offspring, and Group E contains a single adult male-adult female pair with a young infant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTraditionally, the genus Rhinopithecus (Milne-Edwards, 1872, Primates, Colobinae) included four allopatric species, restricted in their distributions to China and Vietnam. In 2010, a fifth species, the black snub-nosed monkey (Rhinopithecus strykeri) was discovered in the Gaoligong Mountains located on the border between China and Myanmar. Despite the remoteness, complex mountainous terrain, dense fog, and armed conflict that characterizes this region, over this past decade Chinese and Myanmar scientists have begun to collect quantitative data on the ecology, behavior and conservation requirements of R.
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