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Susan C. Alberts

Robert F. Durden Distinguished Professor of Biology
Biology
Box 90338, Durham, NC 27708-0338
130 Science Drive, Rm 137, Duke Box 90338, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications


Energetic costs of social dominance in wild male baboons.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · January 2025 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 ... Full text Cite

Using non-invasive behavioral and physiological data to measure biological age in wild baboons.

Journal Article GeroScience · October 2024 Biological aging is near-ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, but its timing and pace vary between individuals and over lifespans. Prospective, individual-based studies of wild animals-especially non-human primates-help identify the social and environmental d ... Full text Cite

Male-mediated early maturation unlikely to evolve via adaptive evolution.

Journal Article Animal behaviour · August 2024 The Vandenbergh effect, or male-mediated maturation, occurs when females reach sexual maturation upon exposure to a novel male. Male-mediated maturation is found across mammals, including in geladas, Theropithecus gelada, where it may be an adaptive ... Full text Cite

Thyroid hormone concentrations in female baboons: Metabolic consequences of living in a highly seasonal environment.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · May 2024 How female mammals adapt metabolically in response to environmental variation remains understudied in the wild, because direct measures of metabolic activity are difficult to obtain in wild populations. However, recent advances in the non-invasive measurem ... Full text Cite

DNA methylation signatures of early-life adversity are exposure-dependent in wild baboons.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · March 2024 The early-life environment can profoundly shape the trajectory of an animal's life, even years or decades later. One mechanism proposed to contribute to these early-life effects is DNA methylation. However, the frequency and functional importance of DNA me ... Full text Cite

Early life drought predicts components of adult body size in wild female baboons.

Journal Article American journal of biological anthropology · November 2023 ObjectivesIn many taxa, adverse early-life environments are associated with reduced growth and smaller body size in adulthood. However, in wild primates, we know very little about whether, where, and to what degree trajectories are influenced by e ... Full text Cite

Environmental, sex-specific and genetic determinants of infant social behaviour in a wild primate.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · November 2023 Affiliative social bonds are linked to fitness components in many social mammals. However, despite their importance, little is known about how the tendency to form social bonds develops in young animals, or if the timing of development is heritable and thu ... Full text Cite

Five Decades of Data Yield No Support for Adaptive Biasing of Offspring Sex Ratio in Wild Baboons (Papio cynocephalus).

Journal Article The American naturalist · October 2023 AbstractOver the past 50 years, a wealth of testable, often conflicting hypotheses have been generated about the evolution of offspring sex ratio manipulation by mothers. Several of these hypotheses have received support in studies of invertebrates and som ... Full text Cite

Social and early life determinants of survival from cradle to grave: A case study in wild baboons.

Journal Article Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · September 2023 Field studies of natural mammal populations present powerful opportunities to investigate the determinants of health and aging using fine-grained observations of known individuals across the life course. Here, we synthesize five decades of findings from on ... Full text Cite

A Causal Mediation Model for Longitudinal Mediators and Survival Outcomes with an Application to Animal Behavior.

Journal Article Journal of agricultural, biological, and environmental statistics · June 2023 In animal behavior studies, a common goal is to investigate the causal pathways between an exposure and outcome, and a mediator that lies in between. Causal mediation analysis provides a principled approach for such studies. Although many applications invo ... Full text Cite

Genetic variance and indirect genetic effects for affiliative social behavior in a wild primate.

Journal Article Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · June 2023 Affiliative social behaviors are linked to fitness components in multiple species. However, the role of genetic variance in shaping such behaviors remains largely unknown, limiting our understanding of how affiliative behaviors can respond to natural selec ... Full text Cite

Data from: Social and early life determinants of survival from cradle to grave: a case study in wild baboons

Dataset · May 15, 2023 Harsh early life environments are linked to a variety of negative outcomes in humans and non-human primates, including poor survival in adulthood. Understanding the pathways that drive the relationship between early life adversity and reduced survival is k ... Full text Cite

Universal gut microbial relationships in the gut microbiome of wild baboons.

Journal Article eLife · May 2023 Ecological relationships between bacteria mediate the services that gut microbiomes provide to their hosts. Knowing the overall direction and strength of these relationships is essential to learn how ecology scales up to affect microbiome assembly, dynamic ... Full text Cite

Early life adversity and adult social relationships have independent effects on survival in a wild primate.

Journal Article Science advances · May 2023 Adverse conditions in early life can have negative consequences for adult health and survival in humans and other animals. What variables mediate the relationship between early adversity and adult survival? Adult social environments represent one candidate ... Full text Cite

Ecology and age, but not genetic ancestry, predict fetal loss in a wild baboon hybrid zone.

Journal Article American journal of biological anthropology · April 2023 ObjectivesPregnancy failure represents a major fitness cost for any mammal, particularly those with slow life histories such as primates. Here, we quantified the risk of fetal loss in wild hybrid baboons, including genetic, ecological, and demogra ... Full text Cite

Data from: Early life adversity and adult social relationships have independent effects on survival in a wild primate

Dataset · February 15, 2023 Adverse conditions in early life can have profound negative consequences for adult health and survival in humans and other animals. How does early adversity exert its influence on adult outcomes, and what variables mediate this relationship? Adult social e ... Full text Cite

Data from: Early life drought predicts components of adult body size in wild female baboons

Dataset · December 6, 2022 Across taxa, adverse early-life environments such as drought and psychosocial stress are associated with reduced growth and smaller body size in adulthood. However, in wild primates, we know very little about whether and to what extent individuals grow pla ... Full text Cite

The expanding value of long-term studies of individuals in the wild.

Journal Article Nature ecology & evolution · December 2022 Full text Cite

Patterns and consequences of age-linked change in local relatedness in animal societies.

Journal Article Nature ecology & evolution · November 2022 The ultimate payoff of behaviours depends not only on their direct impact on an individual, but also on the impact on their relatives. Local relatedness-the average relatedness of an individual to their social environment-therefore has profound effects on ... Full text Cite

Troubled waters: Water availability drives human-baboon encounters in a protected, semi-arid landscape

Journal Article Biological Conservation · October 1, 2022 Most animal habitats are affected by humans. While some species tolerate and even benefit from these changes, others suffer. Understanding when and how human-altered landscapes affect animal behavior, health, reproduction, and survival is essential to spec ... Full text Cite

Selection against admixture and gene regulatory divergence in a long-term primate field study.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · August 2022 Genetic admixture is central to primate evolution. We combined 50 years of field observations of immigration and group demography with genomic data from ~9 generations of hybrid baboons to investigate the consequences of admixture in the wild. Despite no o ... Full text Cite

Synchrony and idiosyncrasy in the gut microbiome of wild baboons.

Journal Article Nature ecology & evolution · July 2022 Human gut microbial dynamics are highly individualized, making it challenging to link microbiota to health and to design universal microbiome therapies. This individuality is typically attributed to variation in host genetics, diets, environments and medic ... Full text Cite

Automated, high-throughput image calibration for parallel-laser photogrammetry

Journal Article Mammalian Biology · June 1, 2022 Parallel-laser photogrammetry is growing in popularity as a way to collect non-invasive body size data from wild mammals. Despite its many appeals, this method requires researchers to hand-measure (i) the pixel distance between the parallel laser spots (in ... Full text Cite

Female reproductive aging in seven primate species: Patterns and consequences.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · May 2022 Age-related changes in fertility have increasingly been documented in wild animal populations: In many species the youngest and oldest reproducers are disadvantaged relative to prime adults. How do these effects evolve, and what explains their diversity ac ... Full text Cite

Genetic variance in fitness indicates rapid contemporary adaptive evolution in wild animals.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · May 2022 The rate of adaptive evolution, the contribution of selection to genetic changes that increase mean fitness, is determined by the additive genetic variance in individual relative fitness. To date, there are few robust estimates of this parameter for natura ... Full text Cite

Mechanisms of inbreeding avoidance in a wild primate.

Journal Article Current biology : CB · April 2022 Inbreeding often imposes net fitness costs,1-5 leading to the expectation that animals will engage in inbreeding avoidance when the costs of doing so are not prohibitive.4-9 However, one recent meta-analysis indicates that animals of ... Full text Cite

Seeing the Future: A Better Way to Model and Test for Adaptive Developmental Plasticity

Journal Article University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper · March 1, 2022 Cite

Distinct gene regulatory signatures of dominance rank and social bond strength in wild baboons.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · February 2022 The social environment is a major determinant of morbidity, mortality and Darwinian fitness in social animals. Recent studies have begun to uncover the molecular processes associated with these relationships, but the degree to which they vary across differ ... Full text Cite

Data from: Mechanisms of inbreeding avoidance in a wild primate

Dataset · January 18, 2022 Inbreeding often imposes net fitness costs, leading to the expectation that animals will engage in inbreeding avoidance when the costs of doing so are not prohibitive. However, one recent meta-analysis indicates that animals of many species do not avoid ma ... Full text Cite

Better baboon break-ups: collective decision theory of complex social network fissions.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · December 2021 Many social groups are made up of complex social networks in which each individual associates with a distinct subset of its groupmates. If social groups become larger over time, competition often leads to a permanent group fission. During such fissions, co ... Full text Cite

The Bruce effect should be defined by function, not mechanism: comments on ‘How to escape male infanticide: mechanisms for avoiding or terminating pregnancy in mammals’

Journal Article Mammal Review · October 1, 2021 Featured Publication Bartoš et al. (2021; Mammal Review 51: 143–153; https://doi.org/10.1111/mam.12219) reviewed the mechanisms involved in the ‘Bruce effect’ – a phenomenon originally documented in inseminated female house mice Mus musculus, who block pregnancy following expo ... Full text Cite

Genetic ancestry predicts male-female affiliation in a natural baboon hybrid zone.

Journal Article Animal behaviour · October 2021 Opposite-sex social relationships are important predictors of fitness in many animals, including several group-living mammals. Consequently, understanding sources of variance in the tendency to form opposite-sex relationships is important for understanding ... Full text Cite

Erratum: Dominance rank-associated gene expression is widespread, sex-specific, and a precursor to high social status in wild male baboons (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2018) 115 (E12163–E12171) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1811967115)

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · September 7, 2021 Correction to Supporting Information for “Dominance rank-associated gene expression is widespread, sex-specific, and a precursor to high social status in wild male baboons,” by Amanda J. Lea, Mercy Y. Akinyi, Ruth Nyakundi, Peter Mareri, Fred Nyundo, Thoma ... Full text Cite

Gut microbiome heritability is nearly universal but environmentally contingent.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · July 2021 Relatives have more similar gut microbiomes than nonrelatives, but the degree to which this similarity results from shared genotypes versus shared environments has been controversial. Here, we leveraged 16,234 gut microbiome profiles, collected over 14 yea ... Full text Cite

Data from: Genetic ancestry predicts male-female affiliation in a natural baboon hybrid zone

Dataset · June 3, 2021 Opposite-sex social relationships are important predictors of fitness in many animals, including several group-living mammals. Consequently, understanding sources of variance in the tendency to form opposite-sex relationships is important for understanding ... Full text Cite

The long lives of primates and the 'invariant rate of ageing' hypothesis.

Journal Article Nature communications · June 2021 Is it possible to slow the rate of ageing, or do biological constraints limit its plasticity? We test the 'invariant rate of ageing' hypothesis, which posits that the rate of ageing is relatively fixed within species, with a collection of 39 human and nonh ... Full text Cite

Causal mediation analysis for sparse and irregular longitudinal data

Journal Article Annals of Applied Statistics · June 1, 2021 Causal mediation analysis seeks to investigate how the treatment effect of an exposure on outcomes is mediated through intermediate variables. Although many applications involve longitudinal data, the existing methods are not directly applicable to setting ... Full text Cite

Data from: Better baboon breakups: collective decision theory of complex social network fissions

Dataset · May 19, 2021 Many social groups are made up of complex social networks in which each individual tends to associate with a distinct subset of its groupmates. If social groups increase in size over time, competition often leads to permanent group fission. During such fis ... Full text Cite

High social status males experience accelerated epigenetic aging in wild baboons.

Journal Article eLife · April 2021 Aging, for virtually all life, is inescapable. However, within populations, biological aging rates vary. Understanding sources of variation in this process is central to understanding the biodemography of natural populations. We constructed a DNA methylati ... Full text Cite

Glucocorticoid exposure predicts survival in female baboons.

Journal Article Science advances · April 2021 Are differences in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activation across the adult life span linked to differences in survival? This question has been the subject of considerable debate. We analyze the link between survival and fecal glucocorticoid ( ... Full text Cite

Maternal death and offspring fitness in multiple wild primates.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · January 2021 Featured Publication Primate offspring often depend on their mothers well beyond the age of weaning, and offspring that experience maternal death in early life can suffer substantial reductions in fitness across the life span. Here, we leverage data from eight wild primate pop ... Full text Cite

Selection against admixture and gene regulatory divergence in a long-term primate field study

Journal Article · 2021 Admixture has profoundly influenced evolution across the tree of life, including in humans and other primates 1,2 . However, we have limited insight into the genetic and phenotypic consequences of admixture in primates, especially during its key early stag ... Full text Cite

Social bonds, social status and survival in wild baboons: a tale of two sexes.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · November 2020 Featured Publication People who are more socially integrated or have higher socio-economic status live longer. Recent studies in non-human primates show striking convergences with this human pattern: female primates with more social partners, stronger social bonds or higher do ... Full text Cite

Data from: Beyond orphaned infants: novel effects of maternal death in wild primates

Dataset · October 26, 2020 Primate offspring often depend on their mothers well beyond the age of weaning, and offspring that experience maternal death in early life can suffer substantial reductions in fitness across the lifespan. Here we leverage data from eight wild primate popul ... Full text Cite

Data from: Beyond orphaned infants: novel effects of maternal death in wild primates

Dataset · October 26, 2020 Primate offspring often depend on their mothers well beyond the age of weaning, and offspring that experience maternal death in early life can suffer substantial reductions in fitness across the lifespan. Here we leverage data from eight wild primate popul ... Full text Cite

Accelerated reproduction is not an adaptive response to early-life adversity in wild baboons.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · October 2020 Featured Publication In humans and other long-lived species, harsh conditions in early life often lead to profound differences in adult life expectancy. In response, natural selection is expected to accelerate the timing and pace of reproduction in individuals who experience s ... Full text Cite

Higher dominance rank is associated with lower glucocorticoids in wild female baboons: A rank metric comparison.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · September 2020 In vertebrates, glucocorticoid secretion occurs in response to energetic and psychosocial stressors that trigger the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Measuring glucocorticoid concentrations can therefore shed light on the stressors associated wit ... Full text Open Access Cite

A comparison of dominance rank metrics reveals multiple competitive landscapes in an animal society.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · September 2020 Across group-living animals, linear dominance hierarchies lead to disparities in access to resources, health outcomes and reproductive performance. Studies of how dominance rank predicts these traits typically employ one of several dominance rank metrics w ... Full text Open Access Cite

Effects of body size on estimation of mammalian area requirements.

Journal Article Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · August 2020 Featured Publication Accurately quantifying species' area requirements is a prerequisite for effective area-based conservation. This typically involves collecting tracking data on species of interest and then conducting home-range analyses. Problematically, autocorrelation in ... Full text Cite

Social bonds do not mediate the relationship between early adversity and adult glucocorticoids in wild baboons.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · August 2020 Featured Publication In humans and other animals, harsh conditions in early life can have profound effects on adult physiology, including the stress response. This relationship may be mediated by a lack of supportive relationships in adulthood. That is, early life adversity ma ... Full text Cite

Social determinants of health and survival in humans and other animals.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · May 2020 The social environment, both in early life and adulthood, is one of the strongest predictors of morbidity and mortality risk in humans. Evidence from long-term studies of other social mammals indicates that this relationship is similar across many species. ... Full text Open Access Cite

Noninvasive measurement of mucosal immunity in a free-ranging baboon population.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · February 2020 Ecoimmunological patterns and processes remain understudied in wild primates, in part because of the lack of noninvasive methods to measure immunity. Secretory immunoglobulin A (sIgA) is the most abundant antibody present at mammalian mucosal surfaces and ... Full text Cite

Genetic ancestry predicts male-female affiliation in a natural baboon hybrid zone

Journal Article · 2020 Featured Publication ABSTRACT Opposite-sex social relationships are important predictors of fitness in many animals, including several group-living mammals. Consequently, understanding sources of variance in the tendency to form opposite-sex relationships is important ... Full text Cite

The costs of competition: high social status males experience accelerated epigenetic aging in wild baboons

Journal Article · 2020 Aging, for virtually all life, is inescapable. However, within populations, biological aging rates vary. Understanding sources of variation in this process is central to understanding the biodemography of natural populations. We constructed a DNA methylati ... Full text Cite

Lifetime Fitness in Wild Female Baboons: Trade-Offs and Individual Heterogeneity in Quality.

Journal Article The American naturalist · December 2019 Understanding the evolution of life histories requires information on how life histories vary among individuals and how such variation predicts individual fitness. Using complete life histories for females in a well-studied population of wild baboons, we t ... Full text Cite

Insights into the evolution of social systems and species from baboon studies.

Journal Article eLife · November 2019 Baboons, members of the genus Papio, comprise six closely related species distributed throughout sub-Saharan Africa and southwest Arabia. The species exhibit more ecological flexibility and a wider range of social systems than many other primates. T ... Full text Cite

Multi-scale predictors of parasite risk in wild male savanna baboons (Papio cynocephalus)

Journal Article Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology · October 1, 2019 Abstract: Several factors are thought to shape male parasite risk in polygynous and polygynandrous mammals, including male-male competition, investment in potentially immunosuppressive hormones, and dispersal. Parasitism is also driven by processes occurri ... Full text Cite

Intergenerational effects of early adversity on survival in wild baboons.

Journal Article eLife · September 2019 Early life adversity can affect an individual's health, survival, and fertility for many years after the adverse experience. Whether early life adversity also imposes intergenerational effects on the exposed individual's offspring is not well understood. W ... Full text Cite

Intergenerational effects of early adversity on survival in wild baboons

Journal Article eLife · September 1, 2019 Early life adversity can affect an individual’s health, survival, and fertility for many years after the adverse experience. Whether early life adversity also imposes intergenerational effects on the exposed individual’s offspring is not well understood. W ... Full text Cite

Costs and drivers of helminth parasite infection in wild female baboons.

Journal Article The Journal of animal ecology · July 2019 Helminth parasites can have wide-ranging, detrimental effects on host reproduction and survival. These effects are best documented in humans and domestic animals, while only a few studies in wild mammals have identified both the forces that drive helminth ... Full text Cite

A comprehensive analysis of autocorrelation and bias in home range estimation

Journal Article Ecological Monographs · May 1, 2019 Home range estimation is routine practice in ecological research. While advances in animal tracking technology have increased our capacity to collect data to support home range analysis, these same advances have also resulted in increasingly autocorrelated ... Full text Cite

Male-mediated prenatal loss: Functions and mechanisms.

Journal Article Evolutionary anthropology · May 2019 Sexually selected infanticide has been the subject of intense empirical and theoretical study for decades; a related phenomenon, male-mediated prenatal loss, has received much less attention in evolutionary studies. Male-mediated prenatal loss occurs when ... Full text Cite

Genes, geology and germs: gut microbiota across a primate hybrid zone are explained by site soil properties, not host species.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · April 2019 Gut microbiota in geographically isolated host populations are often distinct. These differences have been attributed to between-population differences in host behaviours, environments, genetics and geographical distance. However, which factors are most im ... Full text Cite

Climate and Land Cover Analysis Suggest No Strong Ecological Barriers to Gene Flow in a Natural Baboon Hybrid Zone

Journal Article International Journal of Primatology · February 15, 2019 Admixture between diverging taxa has made, and continues to make, an important contribution to primate diversity and evolution. However, although naturally occurring hybrids have now been documented in all major primate lineages, we still know relatively l ... Full text Cite

The diversity of population responses to environmental change.

Journal Article Ecology letters · February 2019 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 ... Full text Cite

Social influences on survival and reproduction: Insights from a long-term study of wild baboons.

Journal Article The Journal of animal ecology · January 2019 For social species, the environment has two components: physical and social. The social environment modifies the individual's interaction with the physical environment, and the physical environment may in turn impact individuals' social relationships. This ... Full text Cite

Mating systems of old world monkeys

Chapter · January 1, 2019 The term ‘Mating system’ refers to an aggregate set of features for a species or population related to mating and reproduction. Across animal taxa, these features sort in predictable ways, resulting in only a handful of different types of mating systems, e ... Full text Cite

Mating Systems of Old World Monkeys

Chapter · January 1, 2019 The term ‘Mating system’ refers to an aggregate set of features for a species or population related to mating and reproduction. Across animal taxa, these features sort in predictable ways, resulting in only a handful of different types of mating systems, e ... Full text Cite

Microbial nitrogen limitation in the mammalian large intestine.

Journal Article Nat Microbiol · December 2018 Resource limitation is a fundamental factor governing the composition and function of ecological communities. However, the role of resource supply in structuring the intestinal microbiome has not been established and represents a challenge for mammals that ... Full text Link to item Cite

Dominance rank-associated gene expression is widespread, sex-specific, and a precursor to high social status in wild male baboons.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · December 2018 In humans and other hierarchical species, social status is tightly linked to variation in health and fitness-related traits. Experimental manipulations of social status in female rhesus macaques suggest that this relationship is partially explained by stat ... Full text Cite

Estimation of energetic condition in wild baboons using fecal thyroid hormone determination.

Journal Article General and comparative endocrinology · May 2018 Understanding how environmental and social factors affect reproduction through variation in energetic condition remains understudied in wild animals, in large part because accurately and repeatedly measuring energetic condition in the wild is a challenge. ... Full text Cite

Interbirth intervals in wild baboons: Environmental predictors and hormonal correlates.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · May 2018 ObjectivesInterbirth intervals (IBIs) are a key metric of female reproductive success; understanding how they are regulated by environmental, social, and demographic factors can provide insight into sources of variance in female fitness.Materi ... Full text Cite

Moving in the Anthropocene: Global reductions in terrestrial mammalian movements.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · January 2018 Animal movement is fundamental for ecosystem functioning and species survival, yet the effects of the anthropogenic footprint on animal movements have not been estimated across species. Using a unique GPS-tracking database of 803 individuals across 57 spec ... Full text Cite

Dominance rank-associated immune gene expression is widespread, sex-specific, and a precursor to high social status in wild male baboons

Journal Article · 2018 ABSTRACT In humans and other hierarchical species, social status is tightly linked to variation in health and fitness-related traits. Experimental manipulations of social status in female rhesus macaques suggest that this relationship is partially ... Full text Cite

Does climate variability influence the demography of wild primates? Evidence from long-term life-history data in seven species.

Journal Article Global change biology · November 2017 Earth's rapidly changing climate creates a growing need to understand how demographic processes in natural populations are affected by climate variability, particularly among organisms threatened by extinction. Long-term, large-scale, and cross-taxon studi ... Full text Cite

Group Living and Male Dispersal Predict the Core Gut Microbiome in Wild Baboons.

Journal Article Integrative and comparative biology · October 2017 The mammalian gut microbiome plays a profound role in the physiology, metabolism, and overall health of its host. However, biologists have only a nascent understanding of the forces that drive inter-individual heterogeneity in gut microbial composition, es ... Full text Cite

Hormonal correlates of natal dispersal and rank attainment in wild male baboons.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · August 2017 In many mammals, maturational milestones such as dispersal and the attainment of adult dominance rank mark stages in the onset of reproductive activity and depend on a coordinated set of hormonal and socio-behavioral changes. Studies that focus on the link ... Full text Cite

Ovarian cycling and reproductive state shape the vaginal microbiota in wild baboons.

Journal Article Microbiome · January 2017 BackgroundThe vaginal microbiome is an important site of bacterial-mammalian symbiosis. This symbiosis is currently best characterized for humans, where lactobacilli dominate the microbial community and may help defend women against infectious dis ... Full text Cite

Conditional fetal and infant killing by male baboons.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · January 2017 Sexually selected feticide-the death of infants in utero as a result of male behaviour-has only rarely been described or analysed, although it is presumed to be favoured by the same selective pressures that favour sexually selected infanticide. To test thi ... Full text Cite

Developmental plasticity: Bridging research in evolution and human health.

Journal Article Evolution, medicine, and public health · January 2017 Early life experiences can have profound and persistent effects on traits expressed throughout the life course, with consequences for later life behavior, disease risk, and mortality rates. The shaping of later life traits by early life environments, known ... Full text Open Access Cite

The emergence of longevous populations.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · November 2016 The human lifespan has traversed a long evolutionary and historical path, from short-lived primate ancestors to contemporary Japan, Sweden, and other longevity frontrunners. Analyzing this trajectory is crucial for understanding biological and sociocultura ... Full text Open Access Cite

Genomewide ancestry and divergence patterns from low-coverage sequencing data reveal a complex history of admixture in wild baboons.

Journal Article Molecular ecology · July 2016 Naturally occurring admixture has now been documented in every major primate lineage, suggesting its key role in primate evolutionary history. Active primate hybrid zones can provide valuable insight into this process. Here, we investigate the history of a ... Full text Cite

Efficient Genome-Wide Sequencing and Low-Coverage Pedigree Analysis from Noninvasively Collected Samples.

Journal Article Genetics · June 2016 Research on the genetics of natural populations was revolutionized in the 1990s by methods for genotyping noninvasively collected samples. However, these methods have remained largely unchanged for the past 20 years and lag far behind the genomics era. To ... Full text Link to item Cite

Development, diet and dynamism: longitudinal and cross-sectional predictors of gut microbial communities in wild baboons.

Journal Article Environmental microbiology · May 2016 Gut bacterial communities play essential roles in host biology, but to date we lack information on the forces that shape gut microbiota between hosts and over time in natural populations. Understanding these forces in wild primates provides a valuable comp ... Full text Cite

Cumulative early life adversity predicts longevity in wild baboons

Journal Article Nat Commun · April 19, 2016 In humans and other animals, harsh circumstances in early life predict morbidity and mortality in adulthood. Multiple adverse conditions are thought to be especially toxic, but this hypothesis has rarely been tested in a prospective, longitudinal framework ... Open Access Link to item Cite

Resource base influences genome-wide DNA methylation levels in wild baboons (Papio cynocephalus).

Journal Article Molecular ecology · April 2016 Variation in resource availability commonly exerts strong effects on fitness-related traits in wild animals. However, we know little about the molecular mechanisms that mediate these effects, or about their persistence over time. To address these questions ... Full text Cite

Female and male life tables for seven wild primate species.

Journal Article Scientific data · March 2016 We provide male and female census count data, age-specific survivorship, and female age-specific fertility estimates for populations of seven wild primates that have been continuously monitored for at least 29 years: sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) in Madag ... Full text Cite

Haven for the night: Sleeping site selection in a wild primate

Journal Article Behavioral Ecology · January 1, 2016 Many animals seek refuge when they sleep, often employing different sleeping sites in successive time periods. Switching from one sleeping site to another might reduce predation or parasite exposure or increase proximity to food resources that are temporal ... Full text Cite

Optimal group size in a highly social mammal.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · December 2015 Group size is an important trait of social animals, affecting how individuals allocate time and use space, and influencing both an individual's fitness and the collective, cooperative behaviors of the group as a whole. Here we tested predictions motivated ... Full text Cite

Social network dynamics: the importance of distinguishing between heterogeneous and homogeneous changes.

Journal Article Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · December 2015 Social network analysis is increasingly applied to understand the evolution of animal sociality. Identifying ecological and evolutionary drivers of complex social structures requires inferring how social networks change over time. In most observational stu ... Full text Cite

Self-organizing dominance hierarchies in a wild primate population.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · September 2015 Linear dominance hierarchies, which are common in social animals, can profoundly influence access to limited resources, reproductive opportunities and health. In spite of their importance, the mechanisms that govern the dynamics of such hierarchies remain ... Full text Cite

Linking Evolution, Ecology, and Health: TriCEM

Journal Article BioScience · July 29, 2015 Full text Cite

Developmental constraints in a wild primate.

Journal Article The American naturalist · June 2015 Early-life experiences can dramatically affect adult traits. However, the evolutionary origins of such early-life effects are debated. The predictive adaptive response hypothesis argues that adverse early environments prompt adaptive phenotypic adjustments ... Full text Cite

Exaggerated sexual swellings and male mate choice in primates: testing the reliable indicator hypothesis in the Amboseli baboons.

Journal Article Animal behaviour · June 2015 The paradigm of competitive males vying to influence female mate choice has been repeatedly upheld, but, increasingly, studies also report competitive females and choosy males. One female trait that is commonly proposed to influence male mate choice is the ... Full text Cite

Social networks predict gut microbiome composition in wild baboons.

Journal Article eLife · March 2015 Social relationships have profound effects on health in humans and other primates, but the mechanisms that explain this relationship are not well understood. Using shotgun metagenomic data from wild baboons, we found that social group membership and social ... Full text Cite

The genetic architecture of gene expression levels in wild baboons.

Journal Article eLife · February 2015 Primate evolution has been argued to result, in part, from changes in how genes are regulated. However, we still know little about gene regulation in natural primate populations. We conducted an RNA sequencing (RNA-seq)-based study of baboons from an inten ... Full text Cite

Knockouts of high-ranking males have limited impact on baboon social networks.

Journal Article Current zoology · January 2015 Social network structures can crucially impact complex social processes such as collective behaviour or the transmission of information and diseases. However, currently it is poorly understood how social networks change over time. Previous studies on prima ... Full text Cite

Canine length in wild male baboons: maturation, aging and social dominance rank.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2015 Canines represent an essential component of the dentition for any heterodont mammal. In primates, like many other mammals, canines are frequently used as weapons. Hence, tooth size and wear may have significant implications for fighting ability, and conseq ... Full text Cite

The socio-genetics of a complex society: female gelada relatedness patterns mirror association patterns in a multilevel society.

Journal Article Molecular ecology · December 2014 Multilevel societies with fission-fusion dynamics--arguably the most complex animal societies--are defined by two or more nested levels of organization. The core of these societies are modular social units that regularly fission and fuse with one another. ... Full text Cite

Social affiliation matters: both same-sex and opposite-sex relationships predict survival in wild female baboons.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · October 2014 Social integration and support can have profound effects on human survival. The extent of this phenomenon in non-human animals is largely unknown, but such knowledge is important to understanding the evolution of both lifespan and sociality. Here, we repor ... Full text Cite

Male tolerance and male-male bonds in a multilevel primate society.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · October 2014 Male relationships in most species of mammals generally are characterized by intense intrasexual competition, with little bonding among unrelated individuals. In contrast, human societies are characterized by high levels of cooperation and strong bonds amo ... Full text Cite

The influence of forage, protected areas, and mating prospects on grouping patterns of male elephants

Journal Article Behavioral Ecology · September 16, 2014 Factors affecting social group size in mammals are relatively well studied for females, but less is known about determinants of group size for males, particularly in species that live in sexually segregated groups. Male grouping patterns are thought to be ... Full text Cite

Measuring fecal testosterone in females and fecal estrogens in males: comparison of RIA and LC/MS/MS methods for wild baboons (Papio cynocephalus).

Journal Article General and comparative endocrinology · August 2014 The development of non-invasive methods, particularly fecal determination, has made possible the assessment of hormone concentrations in wild animal populations. However, measuring fecal metabolites needs careful validation for each species and for each se ... Full text Cite

Complex sources of variance in female dominance rank in a nepotistic society.

Journal Article Animal behaviour · August 2014 Many mammalian societies are structured by dominance hierarchies, and an individual's position within this hierarchy can influence reproduction, behaviour, physiology and health. In nepotistic hierarchies, which are common in cercopithecine primates and al ... Full text Cite

Sources of variance in a female fertility signal: exaggerated estrous swellings in a natural population of baboons.

Journal Article Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · July 2014 Signals of fertility in female animals are of increasing interest to evolutionary biologists, a development that coincides with increasing interest in male mate choice and the potential for female traits to evolve under sexual selection. We characterized v ... Full text Cite

Costs of reproduction in a long-lived female primate: injury risk and wound healing.

Journal Article Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · July 2014 Reproduction is a notoriously costly phase of life, exposing individuals to injury, infectious disease, and energetic tradeoffs. The strength of these costs should be influenced by life history strategies, and in long-lived species, females may be selected ... Full text Cite

The contributions of Jeanne Altmann.

Journal Article Evolutionary anthropology · September 2013 Full text Cite

Reproductive aging patterns in primates reveal that humans are distinct.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · August 2013 Women rarely give birth after ∼45 y of age, and they experience the cessation of reproductive cycles, menopause, at ∼50 y of age after a fertility decline lasting almost two decades. Such reproductive senescence in mid-lifespan is an evolutionary puzzle of ... Full text Cite

Social environment influences the relationship between genotype and gene expression in wild baboons.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · May 2013 Variation in the social environment can have profound effects on survival and reproduction in wild social mammals. However, we know little about the degree to which these effects are influenced by genetic differences among individuals, and conversely, the ... Full text Cite

Testosterone positively associated with both male mating effort and paternal behavior in Savanna baboons (Papio cynocephalus).

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · March 2013 Testosterone (T) is often positively associated with male sexual behavior and negatively associated with paternal care. These associations have primarily been demonstrated in species where investment in paternal care begins well after mating activity is co ... Full text Cite

Concessions of an alpha male? Cooperative defence and shared reproduction in multi-male primate groups.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · September 2012 By living in social groups with potential competitors, animals forgo monopolizing access to resources. Consequently, debate continues over how selection might favour sociality among competitors. For example, several models exist to account for the evolutio ... Full text Cite

Intergroup conflict: Ecological predictors of winning and consequences of defeat in a wild primate population.

Journal Article Animal behaviour · August 2012 In many social species, competition between groups is a major factor proximately affecting group-level movement patterns and space use and ultimately shaping the evolution of group living and complex sociality. Here we evaluated the factors influencing gro ... Full text Cite

The Amboseli baboon research project: 40 years of continuity and change

Chapter · July 1, 2012 In 1963, Jeanne and Stuart Altmann traveled through Kenya and Tanzania searching for a baboon study site. They settled on the Maasai-Amboseli Game Reserve (later Amboseli National Park) and conducted a 13-month study that laid the groundwork for much futur ... Full text Cite

Paternal care and the evolution of exaggerated sexual swellings in primates.

Journal Article Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology · July 2012 The exaggerated sexual swellings exhibited by females of some primate species have been of interest to evolutionary biologists since the time of Darwin. We summarize existing hypotheses for their function and evolution and categorize these hypotheses withi ... Full text Cite

Genetic effects on mating success and partner choice in a social mammal.

Journal Article The American naturalist · July 2012 Mating behavior has profound consequences for two phenomena--individual reproductive success and the maintenance of species boundaries--that contribute to evolutionary processes. Studies of mating behavior in relation to individual reproductive success are ... Full text Cite

Stability of partner choice among female baboons.

Journal Article Animal behaviour · June 2012 In a wide range of taxa, including baboons, close social bonds seem to help animals cope with stress and enhance long-term reproductive success and longevity. Current evidence suggests that female baboons may benefit from establishing and maintaining highl ... Full text Cite

Social status predicts wound healing in wild baboons.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · June 2012 Social status can have striking effects on health in humans and other animals, but the causes often are unknown. In male vertebrates, status-related differences in health may be influenced by correlates of male social status that suppress immune responses. ... Full text Cite

Sex differences in the mother-neonate relationship in wild baboons: Social, experiential and hormonal correlates

Journal Article Animal Behaviour · April 1, 2012 In mammals, maternal care is essential for offspring survival, yet individual differences in this care can dramatically affect offspring growth and development. Few studies have, however, investigated the sources, magnitude and consequences of naturally oc ... Full text Cite

Genetic structure in a dynamic baboon hybrid zone corroborates behavioural observations in a hybrid population.

Journal Article Molecular ecology · February 2012 Behaviour and genetic structure are intimately related: mating patterns and patterns of movement between groups or populations influence the movement of genetic variation across the landscape and from one generation to the next. In hybrid zones, the behavi ... Full text Cite

Puberty and dispersal in a wild primate population

Journal Article Hormones and Behavior · 2012 Cite

Changes in gene expression associated with reproductive maturation in wild female baboons.

Journal Article Genome biology and evolution · January 2012 Changes in gene expression during development play an important role in shaping morphological and behavioral differences, including between humans and nonhuman primates. Although many of the most striking developmental changes occur during early developmen ... Full text Cite

The influence of life history milestones and association networks on crop-raiding behavior in male African elephants.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2012 Factors that influence learning and the spread of behavior in wild animal populations are important for understanding species responses to changing environments and for species conservation. In populations of wildlife species that come into conflict with h ... Full text Cite

Treponema pallidum infection in the wild baboons of East Africa: distribution and genetic characterization of the strains responsible.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2012 It has been known for decades that wild baboons are naturally infected with Treponema pallidum, the bacterium that causes the diseases syphilis (subsp. pallidum), yaws (subsp. pertenue), and bejel (subsp. endemicum) in humans. Recently, a form of T. pallid ... Full text Cite

White monkey syndrome and presumptive copper deficiency in wild savannah baboons.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · November 2011 In immature wild savannah baboons (Papio cynocephalus), we observed symptoms consistent with copper (Cu) deficiency and, more specifically, with a disorder referred to as white monkey syndrome (WMS) in laboratory primates. The objectives of this study were ... Full text Cite

Life at the top: rank and stress in wild male baboons.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · July 2011 In social hierarchies, dominant individuals experience reproductive and health benefits, but the costs of social dominance remain a topic of debate. Prevailing hypotheses predict that higher-ranking males experience higher testosterone and glucocorticoid ( ... Full text Cite

Using molecular and observational techniques to estimate the number and raiding patterns of crop-raiding elephants

Journal Article Journal of Applied Ecology · June 1, 2011 1. Conflict between humans and animals, generated by behaviours like crop raiding, can represent a major threat to the survival and conservation of protected species. Crop raiding is an example where the conflict is assumed to be attributable to a small nu ... Full text Cite

Aging in the natural world: comparative data reveal similar mortality patterns across primates.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · March 2011 Human senescence patterns-late onset of mortality increase, slow mortality acceleration, and exceptional longevity-are often described as unique in the animal world. Using an individual-based data set from longitudinal studies of wild populations of seven ... Full text Cite

Endocrinology of year-round reproduction in a highly seasonal habitat: environmental variability in testosterone and glucocorticoids in baboon males.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · February 2011 In conditions characterized by energetic constraints, such as in periods of low food availability, some trade-offs between reproduction and self-maintenance may be necessary; even year-round breeders may then be forced to exhibit some reproductive seasonal ... Full text Cite

Allele-specific gene expression in a wild nonhuman primate population.

Journal Article Molecular ecology · February 2011 Natural populations hold enormous potential for evolutionary genetic studies, especially when phenotypic, genetic and environmental data are all available on the same individuals. However, untangling the genotype-phenotype relationship in natural populatio ... Full text Cite

Age and individual foraging behavior predict tooth wear in Amboseli baboons

Journal Article American Journal of Physical Anthropology · January 2011 Cite

Low demographic variability in wild primate populations: fitness impacts of variation, covariation, and serial correlation in vital rates.

Journal Article The American naturalist · January 2011 In a stochastic environment, long-term fitness can be influenced by variation, covariation, and serial correlation in vital rates (survival and fertility). Yet no study of an animal population has parsed the contributions of these three aspects of variabil ... Full text Open Access Cite

Tooth size variation related to age in Amboseli baboons

Journal Article Folia Primatologica · 2011 Cite

Association patterns of African elephants in all-male groups: The role of age and genetic relatedness

Journal Article Animal Behaviour · January 1, 2011 Strong social bonds are uncommon among male mammals. In many mammals, however, males form all-male groups, providing opportunities for male-male bonds to emerge. We examined association patterns of male African elephants, Loxodonta africana, in all-male gr ... Full text Cite

Life history context of reproductive aging in a wild primate model.

Journal Article Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · August 2010 The pace of reproductive aging has been of considerable interest, especially in regard to the long postreproductive period in modern women. Here we use data for both sexes from a 37-year longitudinal study of a wild baboon population to place reproductive ... Full text Cite

Evolutionary genetics in wild primates: combining genetic approaches with field studies of natural populations.

Journal Article Trends in genetics : TIG · August 2010 Ecological and evolutionary studies of wild primates hold important keys to understanding both the shared characteristics of primate biology and the genetic and phenotypic differences that make specific lineages, including our own, unique. Although complem ... Full text Cite

Primatology: "a faithful friend is the medicine of life".

Journal Article Current biology : CB · August 2010 Close, stable social bonds enhance longevity in wild baboons, providing clues about the importance of social bonds in our own evolutionary history. ... Full text Cite

The Primate Life History Database: A unique shared ecological data resource.

Journal Article Methods in ecology and evolution · June 2010 The importance of data archiving, data sharing, and public access to data has received considerable attention. Awareness is growing among scientists that collaborative databases can facilitate these activities.We provide a detailed description of the colla ... Full text Cite

Functional significance of MHC variation in mate choice, reproductive outcome, and disease risk

Chapter · April 1, 2010 This chapter surveys connections between the nervous system and the immune system, and suggests that their connections mediate many significant health outcomes. The nervous and immune systems are intimately connected by shared developmental, functional and ... Full text Cite

Conservation. Elephants, ivory, and trade.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · March 2010 Full text Cite

Major histocompatibility complex variation and evolution at a single, expressed DQA locus in two genera of elephants.

Journal Article Immunogenetics · February 2010 Genes of the vertebrate major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are crucial to defense against infectious disease, provide an important measure of functional genetic diversity, and have been implicated in mate choice and kin recognition. As a result, MHC lo ... Full text Cite

Policy Forum: Elephants, Ivory and Trade

Journal Article Science · 2010 Cite

An assessment of the threat to Grevy's zebra from hybridization

Journal Article Animal Conservation · December 8, 2009 Full text Cite

Testosterone related to age and life-history stages in male baboons and geladas.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · October 2009 Despite significant advances in our knowledge of how testosterone mediates life-history trade-offs, this research has primarily focused on seasonal taxa. We know comparatively little about the relationship between testosterone and life-history stages for n ... Full text Cite

"Friendships" between new mothers and adult males: adaptive benefits and determinants in wild baboons (Papio cynocephalus).

Journal Article Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · July 2009 Close associations between adult males and lactating females and their dependent infants are not commonly described in non-monogamous mammals. However, such associations [sometimes called "friendships" (Smuts 1985)] are regularly observed in several primat ... Full text Cite

Evolution of a malaria resistance gene in wild primates.

Journal Article Nature · July 2009 The ecology, behaviour and genetics of our closest living relatives, the nonhuman primates, should help us to understand the evolution of our own lineage. Although a large amount of data has been amassed on primate ecology and behaviour, much less is known ... Full text Cite

Persistence of maternal effects in baboons: Mother's dominance rank at son's conception predicts stress hormone levels in subadult males.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · August 2008 Dominance status and reproductive experience are maternal characteristics that affect offspring traits in diverse taxa, including some cercopithecine primates. Maternal effects of this sort are widespread and are sources of variability in offspring fitness ... Full text Cite

Coping with a challenging environment: effects of seasonal variability and reproductive status on glucocorticoid concentrations of female baboons (Papio cynocephalus).

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · August 2008 Environmental stressors impact physiology and behavior in many species of animals. These effects are partly mediated through changing concentrations of glucocorticoids, which also vary with reproductive state and social conditions. Prior research has focus ... Full text Cite

Fine-scale population genetic structure in a fission-fusion society.

Journal Article Molecular ecology · June 2008 Nonrandom patterns of mating and dispersal create fine-scale genetic structure in natural populations - especially of social mammals - with important evolutionary and conservation genetic consequences. Such structure is well-characterized for typical mamma ... Full text Cite

Late pregnancy glucocorticoid levels predict responsiveness in wild baboon mothers (Papio cynocephalus)

Journal Article Animal Behaviour · May 1, 2008 Maternal care is the most significant measure of successful adaptation among female mammals. Understanding the predictors of individual differences in offspring care is a major objective of mammalian reproductive biology. Recent studies suggest that differ ... Full text Cite

Genetic evidence reveals temporal change in hybridization patterns in a wild baboon population.

Journal Article Molecular ecology · April 2008 The process and consequences of hybridization are of interest to evolutionary biologists because of the importance of hybridization in understanding reproductive isolation, speciation, and the influence of introgression on population genetic structure. Rec ... Full text Cite

Age at maturity in wild baboons: genetic, environmental and demographic influences.

Journal Article Molecular ecology · April 2008 The timing of early life-history events, such as sexual maturation and first reproduction, can greatly influence variation in individual fitness. In this study, we analysed possible sources of variation underlying different measures of age at social and ph ... Full text Cite

Paternal effects on offspring fitness in a multimale primate society.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · February 2008 When females mate with multiple males, paternal care is generally expected to be negligible, because it may be difficult or impossible for males to discriminate their own offspring from those of other males, and because engaging in paternal care may reduce ... Full text Cite

Why play by the rules? Constitutionalism and democratic institutionalization in Ecuador and Uruguay

Journal Article Democratization · 2008 This article argues that constitutionalism and democratic institutionalization are linked, and that variations in progress towards institutionalized democracy are explained by incentives for political actors to comply with constitutional constraints on the ... Full text Cite

Inbreeding depression in non-human primates: a historical review of methods used and empirical data.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · December 2007 Offspring born to related parents may show reduced fitness due to inbreeding depression. Although evidence of inbreeding depression has accumulated for a variety of taxa during the past two decades, such analyses remain rare for primate species, probably b ... Full text Cite

Behavioural inbreeding avoidance in wild African elephants.

Journal Article Molecular ecology · October 2007 The costs of inbreeding depression, as well as the opportunity costs of inbreeding avoidance, determine whether and which mechanisms of inbreeding avoidance evolve. In African elephants, sex-biased dispersal does not lead to the complete separation of male ... Full text Cite

Divided destinies: Group choice by female savannah baboons during social group fission

Journal Article Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology · October 1, 2007 Group living provides benefits to individuals while imposing costs on them. In species that live in permanent social groups, group division provides the only opportunity for nondispersing individuals to change their group membership and improve their benef ... Full text Cite

Parallel effects of genetic variation in ACE activity in baboons and humans.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · September 2007 Like humans, savannah baboons (Papio sp.) show heritable interindividual variation in complex physiological phenotypes. One prominent example of such variation involves production of the homeostatic regulator protein angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE), wh ... Full text Cite

Age, musth and paternity success in wild male African elephants, Loxodonta africana

Journal Article Animal Behaviour · August 1, 2007 Male African elephants experience intense intrasexual selection in gaining access to oestrous females, who represent a very scarce and highly mobile resource. An unusual combination of behavioural and physiological traits in males probably reflects this in ... Full text Cite

Mechanisms of sexual selection: sexual swellings and estrogen concentrations as fertility indicators and cues for male consort decisions in wild baboons.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · January 2007 Male mate-guarding episodes ('consortships'), are taxonomically widespread, yet costly to individual males. Consequently, males should bias consortships toward females with whom the probability of conception is high. We combined data on consortships with v ... Full text Cite

Paternity success in wild African elephants

Journal Article Animal Behaviour · 2007 Cite

Social relationships among adult female baboons (Papio cynocephalus) II. Variation in the quality and stability of social bonds

Journal Article Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology · December 1, 2006 A growing body of evidence suggests that social bonds have adaptive value for animals that live in social groups. Although these findings suggest that natural selection may favor the ability to cultivate and sustain social bonds, we know very little about ... Full text Cite

Social relationships among adult female baboons (papio cynocephalus) I. Variation in the strength of social bonds

Journal Article Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology · December 1, 2006 Sociality has positive effects on female fitness in many mammalian species. Among female baboons, those who are most socially integrated reproduce most successfully. Here we test a number of predictions derived from kin selection theory about the strength ... Full text Cite

Sexual selection in wild baboons: from mating opportunities to paternity success

Journal Article Animal Behaviour · November 1, 2006 In mammals, high dominance rank among males is often associated with mating success. However, mating opportunities do not automatically translate into offspring production; observed mating success may be discordant with offspring production, for three reas ... Full text Cite

Ancient polymorphism and functional variation in the primate MHC-DQA1 5' cis-regulatory region.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · October 2006 Precise regulation of MHC gene expression is critical to vertebrate immune surveillance and response. Polymorphisms in the 5' proximal promoter region of the human class II gene HLA-DQA1 have been shown to influence its transcriptional regulation and may c ... Full text Cite

The ecology of conception and pregnancy failure in wild baboons

Journal Article Behavioral Ecology · September 1, 2006 Environmental conditions are a key factor mediating reproductive success or failure. Consequently, many mammalian taxa have breeding seasons that coordinate critical reproductive stages with optimal environmental conditions. However, in contrast with most ... Full text Cite

The endocrinology of pregnancy and fetal loss in wild baboons.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · May 2006 An impressive body of research has focused on the mechanisms by which the steroid estrogens (E), progestins (P), and glucocorticoids (GC) ensure successful pregnancy. With the advance of non-invasive techniques to measure steroids in urine and feces, stero ... Full text Cite

The ties that bind: genetic relatedness predicts the fission and fusion of social groups in wild African elephants.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · March 2006 Many social animals live in stable groups. In contrast, African savannah elephants (Loxodonta africana) live in unusually fluid, fission-fusion societies. That is, 'core' social groups are composed of predictable sets of individuals; however, over the cour ... Full text Cite

Linear dominance hierarchies in African elephants

Journal Article Animal Behaviour · 2006 Cite

Dominance rank relationships among wild female African elephants, Loxodonta africana

Journal Article Animal Behaviour · January 1, 2006 Socioecological models of the evolution of female-bonded societies predict a relation between resource distribution and the nature of female affiliative and dominance relationships. Species that mainly rely on abundant, widely distributed resources, like A ... Full text Cite

Locus effects and sources of error in noninvasive genotyping

Journal Article Molecular Ecology Notes · September 1, 2005 In spite of more than a decade of research on noninvasive genetic sampling, the low quality and quantity of DNA in noninvasive studies continue to plague researchers. Effects of locus size on error have been documented but are still poorly understood. Furt ... Full text Cite

Measures of dung bolus size for known-age African elephants (Loxodonta africana): Implications for age estimation

Journal Article Journal of Zoology · May 1, 2005 The availability of a population of mostly known-age African elephants Loxodonta africana from Amboseli National Park, Kenya, provided a unique opportunity to assess the use of dung bolus diameter for estimating age. A predictive equation for estimating du ... Full text Cite

Growth rates in a wild primate population: Ecological influences and maternal effects

Journal Article Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology · March 1, 2005 Growth rate is a life-history trait often linked to various fitness components, including survival, age of first reproduction, and fecundity. Here we present an analysis of growth-rate variability in a wild population of savannah baboons (Papio cynocephalu ... Full text Cite

Coming of age: steroid hormones of wild immature baboons, Papio cynocephalus

Journal Article American Journal of Primatology · 2005 Cite

Life-history correlates of steroid concentrations in wild peripartum baboons.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · September 2004 Steroid concentrations during late pregnancy and early lactation may be affected by both a female's reproductive history and her current condition, and may in turn predict subsequent life-history events, such as offspring survival. This study investigated ... Full text Cite

Patterns of coalition formation by adult female baboons in Amboseli, Kenya

Journal Article Animal Behaviour · January 1, 2004 Coalitionary support in agonistic interactions is generally thought to be costly to the actor and beneficial to the recipient. Explanations for such cooperative interactions usually invoke kin selection, reciprocal altruism or mutualism. We evaluated the r ... Full text Cite

Reproductive behavior in wild baboons.

Journal Article Gynecologic and obstetric investigation · January 2004 Full text Cite

Social bonds of female baboons enhance infant survival.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · November 2003 Among nonhuman primates, females often form strong bonds with kin and other group members. These relationships are thought to have adaptive value for females, but direct effects of sociality on fitness have never been demonstrated. We present 16 years of b ... Full text Cite

True paternal care in a multi-male primate society.

Journal Article Nature · September 2003 Although male parental care is rare among mammals, adult males of many cercopithecine primate species provide care for infants and juveniles. This care is often in the form of grooming, carrying, support in agonistic interactions, and protection against in ... Full text Cite

Characterization of tetranucleotide microsatellite loci in the African Savannah Elephant (Loxodonta africana africana)

Journal Article Molecular Ecology Notes · June 1, 2003 Most African elephant (Loxodonta africana africana) populations are isolated and thus threatened by a loss of genetic diversity. As a consequence, genetic analysis of African elephant populations will play an increasing role in their conservation, and micr ... Full text Cite

Variability in reproductive success viewed from a life-history perspective in baboons.

Journal Article American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · May 2003 Nonhuman primates, like humans, mature slowly and have low fertility during a relatively long life. As data have accumulated on life-history patterns of nonhuman primates, comparative studies have yielded important insights into the evolution of this slow ... Full text Cite

Gastrointestinal parasites in free-ranging Kenyan baboons (Papio cynocephalus and P. anubis)

Journal Article International Journal of Primatology · April 1, 2003 We screened fecal samples from 3 groups of wild-living baboons (Papio cynocephalus and P. anubis), involved in longitudinal behavioral studies, for evidence of gastrointestinal parasites. The two objectives of the study were: 1) to compare parasites from t ... Full text Cite

Queuing and queue-jumping: Long-term patterns of reproductive skew in male savannah baboons, Papio cynocephalus

Journal Article Animal Behaviour · April 1, 2003 In many animals, variance in male mating success is strongly correlated with male dominance rank or some other measure of fighting ability. Studies in primates, however, have varied greatly in whether they detect a relationship between male dominance rank ... Full text Cite

Wild female baboons bias their social behaviour towards paternal half-sisters.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · March 2003 Adult female cercopithecines have long been known to bias their social behaviour towards close maternal kin. However, much less is understood about the behaviour of paternal kin, especially in wild populations. Here, we show that wild adult female baboons ... Full text Cite

Genetic evidence for long-term population decline in a savannah-dwelling primate: inferences from a hierarchical bayesian model.

Journal Article Molecular biology and evolution · November 2002 The purpose of this study was to test for evidence that savannah baboons (Papio cynocephalus) underwent a population expansion in concert with a hypothesized expansion of African human and chimpanzee populations during the late Pleistocene. The rationale i ... Full text Cite

Dramatic change in local climate patterns in the Amboseli basin, Kenya

Journal Article African Journal of Ecology · September 1, 2002 The Amboseli basin, a semi-arid, open savannah area of southern Kenya, has experienced extensive changes in habitat since the early 1960's. The present report documents patterns of air temperature and rainfall in Amboseli for the 25-year period beginning 1 ... Full text Cite

The aging baboon: comparative demography in a non-human primate.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · July 2002 Why do closely related primate genera vary in longevity, and what does this teach us about human aging? Life tables of female baboons (Papio hamadryas) in two wild populations of East Africa and in a large captive population in San Antonio, Texas, provide ... Full text Cite

Genetic effective size of a wild primate population: influence of current and historical demography.

Journal Article Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · April 2002 A comprehensive assessment of the determinants of effective population size (N(e)) requires estimates of variance in lifetime reproductive success and past changes in census numbers. For natural populations, such information can be best obtained by combini ... Full text Cite

Significance of primate sexual swellings

Journal Article Nature · 2002 Cite

Sources of variation in the copulation calls of female yellow baboons

Journal Article American Journal of Primatology · 2002 Cite

Information content of female copulation calls in yellow baboons.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · January 2002 In a wide variety of animal species, females produce vocalizations just before, during, or immediately after copulation. Observational and experimental evidence indicates that these copulation calls are sexually selected traits, functioning to promote comp ... Full text Cite

Determinants of effective population size for loci with different modes of inheritance.

Journal Article The Journal of heredity · November 2001 Here we report an assessment of the determinants of effective population size (N(e)) in species with overlapping generations. Specifically, we used a stochastic demographic model to investigate the influence of different life-history variables on N(e)/N (w ... Full text Cite

Immigration and hybridization patterns of yellow and anubis baboons in and around Amboseli, Kenya.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · April 2001 In 1986, Samuels and Altmann reported evidence for a hybrid zone between Papio anubis and Papio cynocephalus in Amboseli, Kenya, in a baboon population that has been the subject of long-term study since 1971 [Samuels & Altmann, International Journal of Pri ... Full text Cite

Cross-species amplification, non-invasive genotyping, and non-Mendelian inheritance of human STRPs in Savannah baboons.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · August 2000 Twenty-nine human microsatellite primer pairs were screened for their utility in the cross-species amplification of baboon DNA derived from both blood and feces as part of a larger study to identify paternal half sisters in a population of wild baboons (Pa ... Full text Cite

Thirteen Mhc-DQA1 alleles from two populations of baboons.

Journal Article Immunogenetics · August 1999 Full text Cite

Paternal kin discrimination in wild baboons.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · July 1999 Mammals commonly avoid mating with maternal kin, probably as a result of selection for inbreeding avoidance. Mating with paternal kin should be selected against for the same reason. However, identifying paternal kin may be more difficult than identifying m ... Full text Cite

Hypercortisolism associated with social subordinance or social isolation among wild baboons.

Journal Article Archives of general psychiatry · December 1997 BackgroundThe phenomena of basal hypercortisolism and of dexamethasone resistance have long intrigued biological psychiatrists, and much is still unknown as to the causes and consequences of such adrenocortical hyperactivity in various neuropsychi ... Full text Cite

Behavior predicts genes structure in a wild primate group.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · June 1996 The predictability of genetic structure from social structure and differential mating success was tested in wild baboons. Baboon populations are subdivided into cohesive social groups that include multiple adults of both sexes. As in many mammals, males ar ... Full text Cite

Mate guarding constrains foraging activity of male baboons

Journal Article Animal Behaviour · January 1, 1996 For many species, mate guarding results in dramatic departures from normal behaviour that reflect compromised attention to feeding and other activities. Such departures have previously been difficult to document in primates, however. Data were gathered on ... Full text Cite

Preparation and activation: determinants of age at reproductive maturity in male baboons

Journal Article Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology · June 1, 1995 Age at maturity is a particularly important life history trait, but maturational data are rare for males in natural populations of mammals. Here we provide information on three maturational milestones and their social and demographic correlates among 43 wi ... Full text Cite

Balancing costs and opportunities: Dispersal in male baboons

Journal Article American Naturalist · January 1, 1995 Full text Cite

Vigilance in young baboons: Effects of habitat, age, sex and maternal rank on glance rate

Journal Article Animal Behaviour · January 1, 1994 Glance rates, a measure of vigilance, were sampled in infant and young juvenile yellow baboons, Papio cynocephalus, in Amboseli, Kenya, to test ecological and social predictions about the ontogeny of vigilance. Glance rates of young baboons did not vary be ... Full text Cite

Genetic variability in the major histocompatibility complex: A review of non‐pathogen‐mediated selective mechanisms

Journal Article American Journal of Physical Anthropology · January 1, 1993 The extraordinary genetic polymorphism observed in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) of the vertebrate genome has attracted the attention of researchers for decades. In almost all taxa that have been investigated, levels of polymorphism are remark ... Full text Cite

Behavioral, endocrine, and immunological correlates of immigration by an aggressive male into a natural primate group.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · June 1992 A very aggressive young adult male entered one of three long-term study groups of yellow baboons. Papio cynocephalus, approximately 3 weeks after an immobilization project began. The immigrant male's rate of agonistic encounters was appreciably higher than ... Full text Cite

Body mass and growth rates in a wild primate population

Journal Article Oecologia · April 1, 1987 We obtined data on body mass and growth rates for the immature members of two groups of wild baboons in Amboseli National Park, Kenya. Data were collected without feeding, trapping, or handling. The data were separated into cross-sectional and longitudinal ... Full text Cite