Changes in Health-Related Fitness of College Females During a One-Semester Activity Course

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Impact of anthropogenic factors on affiliative behaviors among bonnet macaques

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Wiley in American Journal of Physical Anthropology on 16/02/2020, available online: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.24013 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Objectives: In primates, allogrooming and other affiliative behaviors confer many benefits and may be influenced by many socioecological factors. Of these, the impact of anthropogenic factors remain relatively understudied. Here we ask whether interactions with humans decreased macaques’ affiliative behaviors by imposing time-constraints, or increased these behaviors on account of more free-/available-time due to macaques’ consumption of high-energy human foods. Materials and Methods: In Southern India, we collected data on human-macaque and macaque-macaque interactions using focal-animal sampling on two groups of semi-urban bonnet macaques for 11 months. For each macaque within each climatic season, we calculated frequencies of human-macaque interactions, rates of monitoring human activity and foraging on anthropogenic food, dominance ranks, grooming duration, number of unique grooming partners, and frequencies of other affiliative interactions. Results: We found strong evidence for time-constraints on grooming. Macaques that monitored humans more groomed for shorter durations and groomed fewer partners, independent of their group membership, sex, dominance rank, and season. However, monitoring humans had no impact on other affiliative interactions. We found no evidence for the free-time hypothesis foraging on anthropogenic food was unrelated to grooming and other affiliation. Discussion: Our results are consistent with recent findings on other urban-dwellingspecies/populations. Macaques in such environments may be especially reliant on other forms of affiliation that are of short duration (e.g. coalitionary support, lip-smacking) and unaffected by time-constraints. We stress on the importance of evaluating human impact on inter-individual differences in primate/wildlife behavior for conservation efforts

The macronutrient composition of wild and cultivated plant foods of West African chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus ) inhabiting an anthropogenic landscape

Agricultural expansion encroaches on tropical forests and primates in such landscapes frequently incorporate crops into their diet. Understanding the nutritional drivers behind crop‐foraging can help inform conservation efforts to improve human‐primate coexistence. This study builds on existing knowledge of primate diets in anthropogenic landscapes by estimating the macronutrient content of 24 wild and 11 cultivated foods (90.5% of food intake) consumed by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Bossou, Guinea, West Africa. We also compared the macronutrient composition of Bossou crops to published macronutrient measures of crops from Bulindi, Uganda, East Africa. The composition of wild fruits, leaves, and pith were consistent with previous reports for primate diets. Cultivated fruits were higher in carbohydrates and lower in insoluble fiber than wild fruits, while wild fruits were higher in protein. Macronutrient content of cultivated pith fell within the ranges of consumed wild pith. Oil palm food parts were relatively rich in carbohydrates, protein, lipids, and/or fermentable fiber, adding support for the nutritional importance of the oil palm for West African chimpanzees. We found no differences in the composition of cultivated fruits between Bossou and Bulindi, suggesting that macronutrient content alone does not explain differences in crop selection. Our results build on the current understanding of chimpanzee feeding ecology within forest‐agricultural mosaics and provide additional support for the assumption that crops offer primates energetic benefits over wild foods

Evolution of the assassin's arms: Insights from a phylogeny of combined transcriptomic and ribosomal DNA data (Heteroptera: Reduvioidea)

10.1038/srep22177Scientific Reports62217

The evolution of autotomy in leaf-footed bugs

10.1111/evo.13948EVOLUTION745897-91