Energetic costs of social dominance in wild male baboons.

In vertebrates, glucocorticoids can be upregulated in response to both psychosocial and energetic stressors, making it difficult to identify the cause of elevated glucocorticoid concentrations when both types of stressors are present. This problem has been particularly challenging in studies of social dominance rank in wild animals. In contrast to glucocorticoids, thyroid hormone concentrations are largely unaffected by psychosocial stressors and therefore offer a better estimate of energetic challenges.

Eukaryotic composition across seasons and social groups in the gut microbiota of wild baboons.

Background: Animals coexist with complex microbiota, including bacteria, viruses, and eukaryotes (e.g., fungi, protists, and helminths).

Re-evaluating the relationship between female social bonds and infant survival in wild baboons.

Over the past few decades studies have provided strong evidence that the robust links between the social environment, health, and survival found in humans also extend to non-human social animals. A number of these studies emphasize the early life origins of these effects. For example, in several social mammals, more socially engaged mothers have infants with higher rates of survival compared to less socially engaged mothers, suggesting that positive maternal social relationships causally improve offspring survival.

Social and environmental predictors of gut microbiome age in wild baboons.

Mammalian gut microbiomes are highly dynamic communities that shape and are shaped by host aging, including age-related changes to host immunity, metabolism, and behavior. As such, gut microbial composition may provide valuable information on host biological age. Here we test this idea by creating a microbiome-based age predictor using 13,563 gut microbial profiles from 479 wild baboons collected over 14 years.