Melissa Emery Thompson

Journal Article Hormones and Behavior · January 1, 2026 In prior work, naturally cycling women's progesterone levels were found to be associated with their anxiety levels and concerns about levels of social support. The current study further examined these associations. Naturally cycling partnered women (N = 18 ... Full text Cite

Decreased sexual motivation during the human implantation window

Journal Article Evolution and Human Behavior · November 1, 2025 The implantation window denotes cycle days when the endometrium is receptive to an implanting blastocyst. Research supports increased risk of some types of sexually transmitted infections at this time due to local immunosuppression that facilitates the imp ... Full text Cite

Chimpanzee mothers, but not fathers, influence offspring vocal-visual communicative behavior.

Journal Article PLoS biology · August 2025 Face-to-face communication in humans typically consists of a combination of vocal utterances and body language. Similarly, our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, produce multiple vocal signals alongside a wide array of manual gestures, body postures an ... Full text Cite

Distribution and prevalence of <i>Sarcina troglodytae</i> in chimpanzees and the environment throughout Africa.

Journal Article Journal of medical microbiology · July 2025 Introduction. Since 2005, the leading cause of death for western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary (TCS) in Sierra Leone has been epizootic neurologic and gastroenteric syndrome (ENGS), associated with the b ... Full text Cite

Genital Wounding in Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Targeted Attacks or Happenstance?

Journal Article International Journal of Primatology · February 2025 Full text Cite

Sex differences in health burdens across the lifespan in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)

Journal Article Evolution Medicine and Public Health · January 1, 2025 Background and Objectives Understanding health and aging in one of our closest relatives, wild chimpanzees, provides key insights into the evolutionary origins of human disease risk. In humans, females often experience higher rates of disease than men desp ... Full text Cite

Menopause, medicine and human evolution.

Journal Article Nature human behaviour · November 2024 Full text Cite

Selective social tolerance drives differentiated relationships among wild female chimpanzees.

Journal Article Animal behaviour · November 2024 Strong, affiliative bonds often function to facilitate social competition through cooperative defence of resources, but the benefits of social bonds may be low when direct competition is less intense or less beneficial. In such cases, one possible outcome ... Full text Cite

Diet and the energetics of reproduction.

Chapter · July 30, 2024 Informed by the latest scientific tools and millions of hours of field and laboratory work on species across the primate order and around the globe, this volume is an exhaustive synthesis of our understanding of what, why, and how primates ... ... Cite

Age-related reproductive effort in male chimpanzees: terminal investment or alternative tactics?

Journal Article Animal behaviour · July 2024 Because senescence impairs the ability of older males to compete successfully for mates, male reproductive strategies are expected to change with age. The terminal investment hypothesis proposes that older males, who could die soon, should take greater ris ... Full text Cite

Author Correction: Common cold viruses circulating in children threaten wild chimpanzees through asymptomatic adult carriers.

Journal Article Scientific reports · July 2024 Full text Cite

Evolutionary demography of the great apes

Chapter · June 14, 2024 The living hominids share a suite of life history features that distinguishes them from other primates, including larger body size, extended juvenile growth and development, and a long lifespan. While modern humans exhibit many distinctions from their grea ... Full text Cite

Common cold viruses circulating in children threaten wild chimpanzees through asymptomatic adult carriers.

Journal Article Scientific reports · May 2024 Reverse zoonotic respiratory diseases threaten great apes across Sub-Saharan Africa. Studies of wild chimpanzees have identified the causative agents of most respiratory disease outbreaks as "common cold" paediatric human pathogens, but reverse zoonotic tr ... Full text Cite

Ecological variation in adult social play reveals a hidden cost of motherhood for wild chimpanzees.

Journal Article Current biology : CB · March 2024 Though common among humans, social play by adults is an uncommon occurrence in most animals, even between parents and offspring.1,2,3 The most common explanation for why adult play is so rare is that i ... Full text Cite

Age-related physiological dysregulation progresses slowly in semi-free-ranging chimpanzees

Journal Article Evolution Medicine and Public Health · January 1, 2024 Background and objectives: Lifestyle has widespread effects on human health and aging. Prior results from chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), one of humans' closest evolutionary relatives, indicate that these lifestyle effects may also be shared with other spec ... Full text Cite

Facial and genital color ornamentation, testosterone, and reproductive output in high-ranking male rhesus macaques.

Journal Article Scientific reports · January 2024 Males in many vertebrate species have colorful ornaments that evolved by sexual selection. The role of androgens in the genesis and maintenance of these signals is unclear. We studied 21 adult high-ranking male rhesus macaques from nine social groups in th ... Full text Cite

Energetic costs of testosterone in two subsistence populations.

Journal Article American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · November 2023 ObjectiveTestosterone plays a role in mediating energetic trade-offs between growth, maintenance, and reproduction. Investments in a high testosterone phenotype trade-off against other functions, particularly survival-enhancing immune function and ... Full text Cite

Demographic and hormonal evidence for menopause in wild chimpanzees.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · October 2023 Among mammals, post-reproductive life spans are currently documented only in humans and a few species of toothed whales. Here we show that a post-reproductive life span exists among wild chimpanzees in the Ngogo community of Kibale National Park, Uganda. P ... Full text Cite

Age-related social selectivity: An adaptive lens on a later life social phenotype.

Journal Article Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · September 2023 Age-related social selectivity is a process in which older humans reduce their number of social partners to a subset of positive and emotionally fulfilling relationships. Although selectivity has been attributed to humans' unique perceptions of time horizo ... Full text Cite

No effects of exposure to women's fertile window body scents on men's hormonal and psychological responses

Journal Article Evolution and Human Behavior · July 1, 2023 Do men respond to women's peri-ovulatory body odors in functional ways? Prior studies reported more positive changes in men's testosterone and cortisol after exposure to women's scents collected within the putative fertile window (i.e., cycle days when con ... Full text Cite

Distinct developmental trajectories for risky and impulsive decision-making in chimpanzees.

Journal Article Journal of experimental psychology. General · June 2023 Human adolescence is characterized by a suite of changes in decision-making and emotional regulation that promote risky and impulsive behavior. Accumulating evidence suggests that behavioral and physiological shifts seen in human adolescence are shared by ... Full text Cite

Viruses in saliva from sanctuary chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in Republic of Congo and Uganda.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2023 Pathogen surveillance for great ape health monitoring has typically been performed on non-invasive samples, primarily feces, in wild apes and blood in sanctuary-housed apes. However, many important primate pathogens, including known zoonoses, are shed in s ... Full text Cite

Weak, but not strong, ties support coalition formation among wild female chimpanzees.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · January 2023 In social species, individuals may be able to overcome competitive constraints on cooperation by leveraging relationships with familiar, tolerant partners. While strong social ties have been linked to cooperation in several social mammals, it is unclear th ... Full text Cite

Viruses in sanctuary chimpanzees across Africa.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · January 2023 Infectious disease is a major concern for both wild and captive primate populations. Primate sanctuaries in Africa provide critical protection to thousands of wild-born, orphan primates confiscated from the bushmeat and pet trades. However, uncertainty abo ... Full text Cite

Evolutionary Approaches in Aging Research.

Journal Article Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine · November 2022 While evolutionary explanations for aging have been widely acknowledged, the application of evolutionary principles to the practice of aging research has, until recently, been limited. Aging research has been dominated by studies of populations in evolutio ... Full text Cite

Ovarian hormones in relation to naturally cycling women's conception risk: Empirical evidence and implications for behavioral endocrinology.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · November 2022 A substantial body of literature has examined how women's psychology and behavior vary as a function of conception risk across the ovarian cycle. These effects are widely believed to be outcomes of hormonal regulation, in particular effects of estrogens (E ... Full text Cite

Female reproduction and viral infection in a long-lived mammal.

Journal Article The Journal of animal ecology · October 2022 For energetically limited organisms, life-history theory predicts trade-offs between reproductive effort and somatic maintenance. This is especially true of female mammals, for whom reproduction presents multifarious energetic and physiological demands. He ... Full text Cite

Hormonal influences on women's extra-pair sexual interests: The moderating impact of partner attractiveness

Journal Article Evolution and Human Behavior · September 1, 2022 Based on the idea that women are especially attracted to ancestral markers of male genetic quality when conceptive in their cycle, scholars have conjectured that increases in women's extra-pair sexual interests during the conceptive phase of the cycle are ... Full text Cite

Vocal signals facilitate cooperative hunting in wild chimpanzees.

Journal Article Science advances · July 2022 Cooperation and communication likely coevolved in humans. However, the evolutionary roots of this interdependence remain unclear. We address this issue by investigating the role of vocal signals in facilitating a group cooperative behavior in an ape specie ... Full text Cite

Melissa Emery Thompson

Chapter · May 10, 2022 What motivates someone to dedicate their lives to chimpanzees? How does that reflect on our own species? This book brings together a range of chimpanzee experts who tell powerful personal stories about their lives and careers. ... Cite

Wins and losses in intergroup conflicts reflect energy balance in red-tailed monkeys.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · May 2022 The energetic costs and benefits of intergroup conflicts over feeding sites are widely hypothesized to be significant, but rarely quantified. In this study, we use short-term measures of energy gain and expenditure to test whether winning an intergroup enc ... Full text Cite

Richard Wrangham

Chapter · April 1, 2022 It will serve as a complementary resource to the handbooks and journals that have emerged in the last decade on this topic, and will be a useful resource for student and researcher alike. ... Cite

Does scent attractiveness reveal women's ovulatory timing? Evidence from signal detection analyses and endocrine predictors of odour attractiveness.

Journal Article Proceedings. Biological sciences · March 2022 Odour cues associated with shifts in ovarian hormones indicate ovulatory timing in females of many nonhuman species. Although prior evidence supports women's body odours smelling more attractive on days when conception is possible, that research has left a ... Full text Cite

Viruses associated with ill health in wild chimpanzees.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · February 2022 Viral infection is a major cause of ill health in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), but most evidence to date has come from conspicuous disease outbreaks with high morbidity and mortality. To examine the relationship between viral infection and ill healt ... Full text Cite

Oxidative stress and the differential expression of traits associated with mating effort in humans

Journal Article Evolution and Human Behavior · September 1, 2021 Oxidative stress is a physiological condition in which reactive oxygen species created through cellular respiration can potentially damage DNA and tissue. Oxidative stress may partially mediate trade-offs between reproductive effort and survival efforts. O ... Full text Cite

Female-directed aggression by adolescent male chimpanzees primarily constitutes dominance striving, not sexual coercion.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · September 2021 ObjectivesChimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are notable for exhibiting high levels of male-to-female aggression. Much of this aggression from adult males serves sexually coercive functions. Despite being smaller and lower-ranking than adult males, ado ... Full text Cite

Are fathers a good substitute for mothers? Paternal care and growth rates in Shodagor children.

Journal Article Developmental psychobiology · September 2021 Biparental care is a hallmark of human social organization, though paternal investment varies between and within societies. The facultative nature of paternal care in humans suggests males should invest when their care improves child survival and/or qualit ... Full text Cite

Dominance style is a key predictor of vocal use and evolution across nonhuman primates.

Journal Article Royal Society open science · July 2021 Animal communication has long been thought to be subject to pressures and constraints associated with social relationships. However, our understanding of how the nature and quality of social relationships relates to the use and evolution of communication i ... 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

Evolution of water conservation in humans.

Journal Article Current biology : CB · April 2021 To sustain life, humans and other terrestrial animals must maintain a tight balance of water gain and water loss each day.1-3 However, the evolution of human water balance physiology is poorly understood due to the absence of comparative measure ... Full text Cite

Endocrinological effects of social exclusion and inclusion: Experimental evidence for adaptive regulation of female fecundity.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · April 2021 When current conditions are probabilistically less suitable for successful reproduction than future conditions, females may prevent or delay reproduction until conditions improve. Throughout human evolution, social support was likely crucial to female repr ... Full text Cite

Aggression, glucocorticoids, and the chronic costs of status competition for wild male chimpanzees.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · April 2021 Across vertebrates, high social status affords preferential access to resources, and is expected to correlate positively with health and longevity. Increasing evidence, however, suggests that although dominant females generally enjoy reduced exposure to ph ... Full text Cite

Sex differences in early experience and the development of aggression in wild chimpanzees.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · March 2021 Sex differences in physical aggression occur across human cultures and are thought to be influenced by active sex role reinforcement. However, sex differences in aggression also exist in our close evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees, who do not engage in a ... Full text Cite

Effects of domestication on the gut microbiota parallel those of human industrialization.

Journal Article eLife · March 2021 Domesticated animals experienced profound changes in diet, environment, and social interactions that likely shaped their gut microbiota and were potentially analogous to ecological changes experienced by humans during industrialization. Comparing the gut m ... Full text Cite

The Gunung Palung Orangutan Project: Twenty-five years at the intersection of research and conservation in a critical landscape in Indonesia

Journal Article Biological Conservation · March 1, 2021 The Gunung Palung Orangutan Project has conducted research on critically endangered wild Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii) since 1994 in Gunung Palung National Park, West Kalimantan, Indonesia. A major goal of our broad-ranging research on orangu ... Full text Cite

Age Patterning in Wild Chimpanzee Gut Microbiota Diversity Reveals Differences from Humans in Early Life.

Journal Article Current biology : CB · February 2021 Survival in primates is facilitated by commensal gut microbes that ferment otherwise indigestible plant matter, resist colonization by pathogens, and train the developing immune system.1,2 However, humans are unique among p ... Full text Cite

Primate Reproduction: When Timing Is Everything.

Journal Article Current biology : CB · January 2021 In species with intense male competition, reproducing at the wrong time can have dire consequences for females. A new study of wild gelada monkeys finds that females delay or accelerate puberty to moderate the risks of inbreeding and infanticide. ... Full text Cite

Barbara Smuts and Robert Smuts

Chapter · January 1, 2021 Full text Cite

Age-related change in adult chimpanzee social network integration

Journal Article Evolution Medicine and Public Health · January 1, 2021 Background: Social isolation is a key risk factor for the onset and progression of age-related disease and mortality in humans. Nevertheless, older people commonly have narrowing social networks, with influences from both cultural factors and the constrain ... Full text Cite

Helminth infection is associated with dampened cytokine responses to viral and bacterial stimulations in Tsimane forager-horticulturalists

Journal Article Evolution Medicine and Public Health · January 1, 2021 Background: Soil-transmitted helminths (STHs) and humans share long co-evolutionary histories over which STHs have evolved strategies to permit their persistence by downregulating host immunity. Understanding the interactions between STHs and other pathoge ... Full text Cite

Helminth infection is associated with dampened cytokine responses to viral and bacterial stimulations in Tsimane hunter-horticulturalists

Preprint · 2021 Full text Cite

Age-related change in adult chimpanzee social network integration

Preprint · 2021 Full text Cite

The Kibale Chimpanzee Project: Over thirty years of research, conservation, and change.

Journal Article Biological Conservation. · December 2020 Long-term primate field research programs contribute to the protection of endangered primate species and their vanishing habitats by informing and fostering local and international conservation programs. The Kibale Chimpanzee Project (KCP) has studied the ... Full text Cite

Matriliny reverses gender disparities in inflammation and hypertension among the Mosuo of China.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · December 2020 Women experience higher morbidity than men, despite living longer. This is often attributed to biological differences between the sexes; however, the majority of societies in which these disparities are observed exhibit gender norms that favor men. We test ... Full text Cite

Insights from evolutionarily relevant models for human ageing.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · November 2020 As the world confronts the health challenges of an ageing population, there has been dramatically increased interest in the science of ageing. This research has overwhelmingly focused on age-related disease, particularly in industrialized human populations ... Full text Cite

Human-like adrenal development in wild chimpanzees: A longitudinal study of urinary dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate and cortisol.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · November 2020 The development of the adrenal cortex varies considerably across primates, being most conspicuous in humans, where a functional zona reticularis-the site of dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate (DHEA/S) production-does not develop until middle childhood (5-8 yea ... Full text Cite

Evaluating the impact of physical frailty during ageing in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · November 2020 While declining physical performance is an expected consequence of ageing, human clinical research has placed increasing emphasis on physical frailty as a predictor of death and disability in the elderly. We examined non-invasive measures approximating fra ... Full text Cite

Demography, life-history trade-offs, and the gastrointestinal virome of wild chimpanzees.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · November 2020 In humans, senescence increases susceptibility to viral infection. However, comparative data on viral infection in free-living non-human primates-even in our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos (Pan troglodytes and P. paniscus)- ... Full text Cite

Faecal parasites increase with age but not reproductive effort in wild female chimpanzees.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · November 2020 Energy investment in reproduction is predicted to trade off against other necessary physiological functions like immunity, but it is unclear to what extent this impacts fitness in long-lived species. Among mammals, female primates, and especially apes, exh ... Full text Cite

Social selectivity in aging wild chimpanzees.

Journal Article Science (New York, N.Y.) · October 2020 Humans prioritize close, positive relationships during aging, and socioemotional selectivity theory proposes that this shift causally depends on capacities for thinking about personal future time horizons. To examine this theory, we tested for key elements ... Full text Cite

Sexual dimorphism in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) and human age-specific fertility.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · July 2020 Across vertebrates, species with intense male mating competition and high levels of sexual dimorphism in body size generally exhibit dimorphism in age-specific fertility. Compared with females, males show later ages at first reproduction and earlier reprod ... Full text Cite

Competitive ability determines coalition participation and partner selection during maturation in wild male chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).

Journal Article Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · July 2020 Social mammals often live in groups in which a dominance hierarchy is an important determinant of access to mates. In addition to competing individually, males may form coalitions of two or more to attack or intimidate rivals. Coalition formation could be ... Full text Cite

Wild chimpanzees exhibit humanlike aging of glucocorticoid regulation.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · April 2020 Cortisol, a key product of the stress response, has critical influences on degenerative aging in humans. In turn, cortisol production is affected by senescence of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, leading to progressive dysregulation and incre ... Full text Cite

Non-invasive estimation of the costs of feeding competition in a neotropical primate.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · February 2020 A key goal in behavioral ecology is to investigate the factors influencing the access to food resources and energetic condition of females, which are strong predictors of their reproductive success. We aimed to investigate how ecological factors, social fa ... Full text Cite

Urinary markers of oxidative stress respond to infection and late-life in wild chimpanzees.

Journal Article PloS one · January 2020 Oxidative stress (OS) plays a marked role in aging and results from a variety of stressors, making it a powerful measure of health and a way to examine costs associated with life history investments within and across species. However, few urinary OS marker ... Full text Cite

Psychological cycle shifts redux: Revisiting a preregistered study examining preferences for muscularity

Journal Article Evolution and Human Behavior · November 1, 2019 Jünger et al. (2018) conducted a preregistered study examining whether women particularly prefer muscular bodies when conceptive in their cycles. Despite an impressive number of participants and within-woman observations, they found no evidence for a prefe ... Full text Cite

Psychological cycle shifts redux, once again: response to Stern et al., Roney, Jones et al., and Higham

Journal Article Evolution and Human Behavior · November 1, 2019 Full text Cite

How can non-human primates inform evolutionary perspectives on female-biased kinship in humans?

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · September 2019 The rarity of female-biased kinship organization in human societies raises questions about ancestral hominin family structures. Such questions require grounding in the form and function of kin relationships in our close phylogenetic relatives, the non-huma ... Full text Cite

The evolution of female-biased kinship in humans and other mammals.

Journal Article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · September 2019 Female-biased kinship (FBK) arises in numerous species and in diverse human cultures, suggesting deep evolutionary roots to female-oriented social structures. The significance of FBK has been debated for centuries in human studies, where it has often been ... Full text Cite

Social contact and hormonal changes predict post-conflict cooperation between friends

Journal Article Evolution and Human Behavior · July 1, 2019 Long-term cooperation between individuals necessitates repairing damage arising from inevitable competing interests. How two members of a valuable relationship switch from competing to cooperating constitutes an important problem for any social species. Ob ... Full text Cite

Males with a mother living in their group have higher paternity success in bonobos but not chimpanzees.

Journal Article Current biology : CB · May 2019 In many group-living mammals, mothers may increase the reproductive success of their daughters even after they are nutritionally independent and fully grown [1]. However, whether such maternal effects exist for adult sons is largely unknown. Here we show t ... Full text Cite

Testosterone, cortisol, and status-striving personality features: A review and empirical evaluation of the Dual Hormone hypothesis.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · March 2019 Decades of research in behavioral endocrinology has implicated the gonadal hormone testosterone in the regulation of mating effort, often expressed in primates in the form of aggressive and/or status-striving behavior. Based on the idea that neuroendocrine ... Full text Cite

Simultaneous outbreaks of respiratory disease in wild chimpanzees caused by distinct viruses of human origin.

Journal Article Emerging microbes & infections · January 2019 Respiratory viruses of human origin infect wild apes across Africa, sometimes lethally. Here we report simultaneous outbreaks of two distinct human respiratory viruses, human metapneumovirus (MPV; Pneumoviridae: Metapneumovirus) and human respirovirus 3 (H ... Full text Cite

Steroid Hormone Reactivity in Fathers Watching Their Children Compete.

Journal Article Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · September 2018 This study examines steroid production in fathers watching their children compete, extending previous research of vicarious success or failure on men's hormone levels. Salivary testosterone and cortisol levels were measured in 18 fathers watching their chi ... Full text Cite

Risk factors for respiratory illness in a community of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).

Journal Article Royal Society open science · September 2018 Respiratory illnesses have caused significant mortality in African great ape populations. While much effort has been given to identifying the responsible pathogens, little is known about the factors that influence disease transmission or individual suscept ... Full text Cite

A thousand ways to build a baby

Journal Article Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews · May 2018 Full text Cite

Lethal Respiratory Disease Associated with Human Rhinovirus C in Wild Chimpanzees, Uganda, 2013.

Journal Article Emerging infectious diseases · February 2018 We describe a lethal respiratory outbreak among wild chimpanzees in Uganda in 2013 for which molecular and epidemiologic analyses implicate human rhinovirus C as the cause. Postmortem samples from an infant chimpanzee yielded near-complete genome sequences ... Full text Cite

The development of feeding behavior in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii).

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · January 2018 ObjectivesPrimates have an extended period of juvenility before adulthood. Although dietary complexity plays a prominent role in hypotheses regarding the evolution of extended juvenility, the development of feeding behavior is still poorly underst ... Full text Cite

Alpha male status and availability of conceptive females are associated with high glucocorticoid concentrations in high-ranking male rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) during the mating season.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · January 2018 The relationship between male mating opportunities, stress, and glucocorticoid concentrations is complicated by the fact that physiological stress and glucocorticoid concentrations can be influenced by dominance rank, group size, and the stability of the m ... Full text Cite

Reproductive Seasonality

Chapter · 2018 Cite

Fertility and Fecundity

Chapter · November 27, 2017 This volume, edited by Martin Muller, Richard Wrangham, and David Pilbeam, brings together scientists who are leading a revolution to discover and explain human uniqueness, by studying our closest living relatives. ... Cite

Predation by female chimpanzees: Toward an understanding of sex differences in meat acquisition in the last common ancestor of Pan and Homo.

Journal Article Journal of human evolution · September 2017 Among modern foraging societies, men hunt more than women, who mostly target relatively low-quality, reliable resources (i.e., plants). This difference has long been assumed to reflect human female reproductive constraints, particularly caring for and prov ... Full text Cite

Using urinary parameters to estimate seasonal variation in the physical condition of female white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus imitator).

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · August 2017 ObjectivesThe physical condition of females depends on access to resources, which vary over space and time. Assessing variation in physical condition can help identify factors affecting reproductive success, but noninvasive measurement is difficul ... Full text Cite

Energetics of feeding, social behavior, and life history in non-human primates.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · May 2017 Energy is a variable of key importance to a wide range of research in primate behavioral ecology, life history, and conservation. However, obtaining detailed data on variation in energetic condition, and its biological consequences, has been a considerable ... Full text Cite

Oxytocin and vulnerable romantic relationships.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · April 2017 Oxytocin (OT) has been implicated in the formation and maintenance of various social relationships, including human romantic relationships. Competing models predict, alternatively, positive or negative associations between naturally-occurring OT levels and ... Full text Cite

Screening wild and semi-free ranging great apes for putative sexually transmitted diseases: Evidence of Trichomonadidae infections.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · April 2017 Full text Cite

Menstruation

Chapter · 2017 Cite

Reproductive Seasonality

Chapter · 2017 Cite

C-peptide of insulin

Chapter · 2017 Cite

Ovarian Cycle

Chapter · January 1, 2017 The ovarian cycle is the recurring pattern of hormonal events, and associated changes to reproductive tissues, that governs ovulation, conception, and zygotic implantation in mammalian females. Primate ovarian cycles follow a general template, whereby the ... Full text Cite

Cognitive specialization for verbal vs. spatial ability in men and women: Neural and behavioral correlates

Journal Article Personality and Individual Differences · November 1, 2016 An important dimension of individual differences, independent of general cognitive ability (GCA), is specialization for verbal or spatial ability. In this study we investigated neuroanatomic, network, and personality features associated with verbal vs. spa ... Full text Cite

Associations between male testosterone and immune function in a pathogenically stressed forager-horticultural population.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · November 2016 ObjectivesDespite well-known fitness advantages to males who produce and maintain high endogenous testosterone levels, such phenotypes may be costly if testosterone-mediated investment in reproductive effort trade-off against investment in somatic ... Full text Cite

Faster reproductive rates trade off against offspring growth in wild chimpanzees.

Journal Article Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · July 2016 Life history theory predicts a trade-off between offspring quality and quantity. Among large-bodied mammals, prolonged lactation and infant dependence suggest particularly strong potential for a quality-quantity trade-off to exist. Humans are one of the on ... Full text Cite

Metabolic acceleration and the evolution of human brain size and life history.

Journal Article Nature · May 2016 Humans are distinguished from the other living apes in having larger brains and an unusual life history that combines high reproductive output with slow childhood growth and exceptional longevity. This suite of derived traits suggests major changes in ener ... Full text Cite

The relationship between testosterone and long-distance calling in wild male chimpanzees

Journal Article Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology · May 1, 2016 Abstract: Long-distance calling is a common behaviour in animals, which has various important social functions. At a physiological level, calling is often mediated by gonadal hormones such as testosterone (T), particularly when its function is linked to in ... Full text Cite

Comparative perspectives on human reproductive behavior

Journal Article Current Opinion in Psychology · February 1, 2016 Cyclic changes in women's sexual desire are consistent with an ancestral pattern in which hormonal shifts around ovulation prime behavioral patterns. We use comparative primate data to evaluate the plausibility of a prominent hypothesis in evolutionary psy ... Full text Cite

Hormonal predictors of women's extra-pair vs. in-pair sexual attraction in natural cycles: Implications for extended sexuality.

Journal Article Hormones and behavior · February 2016 In naturally cycling women, Roney and Simmons (2013) examined hormonal correlates of their desire for sexual contact. Estradiol was positively associated, and progesterone negatively associated, with self-reported desire. The current study extended these f ... Full text Cite

Breaking the succession rule: The costs and benefits of an alpha-status take-over by an immigrant rhesus macaque on Cayo Santiago

Journal Article Behaviour · January 1, 2016 Explaining intraspecific variation in reproductive tactics hinges on measuring associated costs and benefits. Yet, this is difficult if alternative (purportedly less optimal) tactics remain unobserved. We describe a rare alpha-position take-over by an immi ... Full text Cite

Women Exposed to the Scents of Fertile-Phase and Luteal-Phase Women: Evaluative, Competitive, and Endocrine Responses

Journal Article Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology · December 1, 2015 Men prefer the scents of fertile-phase women to the scents of luteal-phase women. Very little research, however, has examined women’s responses to other women’s scents. The current research did so by asking female participants to smell one of two sets of t ... Full text Cite

Depression as sickness behavior? A test of the host defense hypothesis in a high pathogen population.

Journal Article Brain, behavior, and immunity · October 2015 Sadness is an emotion universally recognized across cultures, suggesting it plays an important functional role in regulating human behavior. Numerous adaptive explanations of persistent sadness interfering with daily functioning (hereafter "depression") ha ... Full text Cite

Screening wild and semi-free ranging great apes for putative sexually transmitted diseases: Evidence of Trichomonadidae infections.

Journal Article American journal of primatology · October 2015 Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) can persist endemically, are known to cause sterility and infant mortality in humans, and could have similar impacts in wildlife populations. African apes (i.e., chimpanzees, bonobos, and to a lesser extent gorillas) sh ... Full text Cite

Energy expenditure and activity among Hadza hunter-gatherers.

Journal Article American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · September 2015 ObjectivesStudies of total energy expenditure, (TEE; kcal/day) among traditional populations have challenged current models relating habitual physical activity to daily energy requirements. Here, we examine the relationship between physical activi ... Full text Cite

The Paternal Provisioning Hypothesis: effects of workload and testosterone production on men's musculature.

Journal Article American journal of physical anthropology · September 2015 ObjectivesTestosterone supports male reproduction through a broad range of behavioral and physiological effects, including the maintenance of sexually dimorphic muscle used in male-male competition. Although it is often assumed that a persistent r ... Full text Cite

Oxidative stress as an indicator of the costs of reproduction among free-ranging rhesus macaques.

Journal Article The Journal of experimental biology · July 2015 Sex differences in longevity may reflect sex-specific costs of intra-sexual competition and reproductive effort. As male rhesus macaques experience greater intrasexual competition and die younger, we predicted that males would experience greater oxidative ... Full text Cite

Testosterone and male cognitive performance in Tsimane forager-horticulturalists.

Journal Article American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · July 2015 ObjectiveTestosterone plays a vital role in brain function and behavior. Among humans, age-related decline in testosterone is associated with declining cognitive functioning, and aging men with higher testosterone maintain better cognitive perform ... Full text Cite

Male quality, dominance rank, and mating success in free-ranging rhesus macaques

Journal Article Behavioral Ecology · May 1, 2015 In social mammals, condition and health are important determinants of the ability of males to achieve high dominance rank. Measures of individual condition are also predicted to affect male fitness via female preference for high-quality mates. We examined ... Full text Cite

Musculoskeletal growth patterns in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · March 1, 2015 Link to item Cite

Sexual behavior

Chapter · January 15, 2015 This reference work will allow users to search efficiently and effectively within the social and behavioral sciences while promoting interdisciplinary understanding of individual topics.Features & Benefits: This project represents a unique ... ... Cite

Coping with a challenging environment: nutritional balancing, health, and energetics in wild Bornean orangutans

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2015 Cite

Innate immune function and oxidative stress as measures of male quality in Cayo Santiago rhesus macaques

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2015 Cite

Energetic effects on the long calls of adult male Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii)

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2015 Cite

Tradeoffs between reproductive rate and offspring growth in wild chimpanzees

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2015 Cite

Energy balance and stress responses correspond with individual participation by redtail monkeys in aggressive intergroup interactions

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2015 Cite

Testosterone is associated with lower cell-mediated immune responses in a forager-horticultural population

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF HUMAN BIOLOGY · 2015 Cite

Chimpanzees

Chapter · 2015 This Encyclopedia is a comprehensive A-Z reference that defines sexuality from a broad biocultural perspective and show the diversity of human sexual behavior and belief systems. ... Cite

Sexual conflict: nice guys finish last.

Other Current biology : CB · December 2014 Male chimpanzees are often aggressive towards females. A new study from Gombe National Park in Tanzania reports that persistent attacks increase a male's probability of siring offspring. ... Full text Cite

Male chimpanzees compromise the foraging success of their mates in Kibale National Park, Uganda

Journal Article Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology · December 1, 2014 Sexual conflict develops when the optimal reproductive strategy for one sex inflicts fitness costs upon the other sex. Among species with intense within-group feeding competition and high costs of reproduction, females are expected to experience reduced fo ... Full text Cite

Human males appear more prepared than females to resolve conflicts with same-sex peers.

Journal Article Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · June 2014 The aim of the study was to investigate sex differences in proximate mechanisms that precede the termination of conflicts. In Study 1, we asked women and men to report their intensity of anger in response to hypothetical, common transgressions involving a ... Full text Cite

The High Price of Success: Costs of Mating Effort in Male Primates

Journal Article International Journal of Primatology · January 1, 2014 While males are generally the low investing sex when it comes to offspring care, males of many species experience intense and persistent mating effort. Mating effort incurs a variety of costs which are expected to have non-negligible effects on fitness, as ... Full text Cite

The Foraging Costs of Mating Effort in Male Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)

Journal Article International Journal of Primatology · January 1, 2014 Costs of mating effort can affect the reproductive strategies and lifetime fitness of male primates, but interspecific and interindividual variation in the magnitude and distribution of costs is poorly understood. Male costs have primarily been recognized ... Full text Cite

Political influence associates with cortisol and health among egalitarian forager-farmers

Journal Article Evolution Medicine and Public Health · January 1, 2014 Background and objectives: Low social status increases risk of disease due, in part, to the psychosocial stress that accompanies feeling subordinate or poor. Previous studies report that chronic stress and chronically elevated cortisol can impair cardiovas ... Full text Cite

ENERGETIC AND SOCIAL CONSTRAINTS ON THE LIFE HISTORIES OF CHIMPANZEES

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PRIMATOLOGY · 2014 Cite