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Eve of extinction
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Open AccessHuman subsistence and signatures of selection on chemosensory genes
Chemosensation (olfaction, taste) is essential for detecting and assessing foods, such that dietary shifts elicit evolutionary changes in vertebrate chemosensory genes. The transition from hunting and gatherin...
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Decolonizing the Ourang-Outang
Language is a powerful form of communication that can reify and reproduce colonial legacies. For many primatologists––scholars who engage with diverse publics, ranging from personal social networks to formal c...
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Open AccessFootprint evidence of early hominin locomotor diversity at Laetoli, Tanzania
Bipedal trackways discovered in 1978 at Laetoli site G, Tanzania and dated to 3.66 million years ago are widely accepted as the oldest unequivocal evidence of obligate bipedalism in the human lineage1–3. Another ...
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Open AccessConvergence of human and Old World monkey gut microbiomes demonstrates the importance of human ecology over phylogeny
Comparative data from non-human primates provide insight into the processes that shaped the evolution of the human gut microbiome and highlight microbiome traits that differentiate humans from other primates. ...
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Global phylogeography and ancient evolution of the widespread human gut virus crAssphage
Microbiomes are vast communities of microorganisms and viruses that populate all natural ecosystems. Viruses have been considered to be the most variable component of microbiomes, as supported by virome survey...
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Open AccessTarsier Goggles: a virtual reality tool for experiencing the optics of a dark-adapted primate visual system
Charles Darwin viewed eyes as the epitome of evolution by natural selection, describing them as organs of extreme perfection and complication. The visual system is therefore fertile ground for teaching fundame...
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Foraging Performance, Prosociality, and Kin Presence Do Not Predict Lifetime Reproductive Success in Batek Hunter-Gatherers
Identifying the determinants of reproductive success in small-scale societies is critical for understanding how natural selection has shaped human evolution and behavior. The available evidence suggests that s...
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Dr Seuss and the real Lorax
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The Sensory Systems of Alouatta: Evolution with an Eye to Ecology
Our knowledge about the perceptual world of howler monkeys is unevenly distributed between the five senses. Whereas there is abundant knowledge about the sense of vision in the genus Alouatta, only limited data o...
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Dichromatic vision in a fruit bat with diurnal proclivities: the Samoan flying fox (Pteropus samoensis)
A nocturnal bottleneck during mammalian evolution left a majority of species with two cone opsins, or dichromatic color vision. Primate trichromatic vision arose from the duplication and divergence of an X-lin...
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The impact of agricultural emergence on the genetic history of African rainforest hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists
The emergence of agriculture in West-Central Africa approximately 5,000 years ago, profoundly modified the cultural landscape and mode of subsistence of most sub-Saharan populations. How this major innovation ...
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Open AccessExpression and Evolution of Short Wavelength Sensitive Opsins in Colugos: A Nocturnal Lineage That Informs Debate on Primate Origins
A nocturnal activity pattern is central to almost all hypotheses on the adaptive origins of primates. This enduring view has been challenged in recent years on the basis of variation in the opsin genes of noct...
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Thermal Imaging of Aye-Ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis) Reveals a Dynamic Vascular Supply During Haptic Sensation
Infrared thermography (IRT) is used to visualize and estimate variation in surface temperatures. Applications of IRT to animal research include studies of thermofunctional anatomy, ecology, and social behavior...
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A Noninvasive Method for Estimating Nitrogen Balance in Free-Ranging Primates
The vital role of body protein as an energy reserve has received little focus in studies of wild primates. Owing to the relatively low protein content of fruit, some frugivorous primates could face a protein d...
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Open AccessStable carbon and nitrogen isotope enrichment in primate tissues
Isotopic studies of wild primates have used a wide range of tissues to infer diet and model the foraging ecologies of extinct species. The use of mismatched tissues for such comparisons can be problematic beca...
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Mechanical Properties of Plant Underground Storage Organs and Implications for Dietary Models of Early Hominins
The diet of early human ancestors has received renewed theoretical interest since the discovery of elevated δ13C values in the enamel of Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus. As a result, the homi...
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Diet and the evolution of human amylase gene copy number variation
Starch consumption is a prominent characteristic of agricultural societies and hunter-gatherers in arid environments. In contrast, rainforest and circum-arctic hunter-gatherers and some pastoralists consume mu...
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Light levels used during feeding by primate species with different color vision phenotypes
The intensity of available light is important in determining how well a diurnal animal can distinguish color. Primates with different types of color vision may exhibit behaviors that maximize visual contrast d...
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Seed-spitting Primates and the Conservation and Dispersion of Large-seeded Trees
Primate frugivory may reduce density-dependent predation on seeds and seedlings via effective seed dispersal. Accordingly, the tendency of cercopithecines to spit and scatter seeds > 4 mm wide could represent ...
