Cofeeding tolerance in chimpanzees depends on group composition: a longitudinal study across four communities.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: DeTroy SE
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7940988 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Abstract Peatland ecosystems are of global conservation and environmental importance storing globally significant amounts of ancient carbon, regulating regional temperatures and hydrological regimes, and supporting unique biodiversity. Livestock grazing, land‐use change, drainage, nutrient and acid deposition, and wildfire threaten the composition and function of many peatlands including those in the uplands of the United Kingdom. Presently, little is known about either the short‐ or long‐term effects of wildfires within these systems in the UK. Our study aimed to evaluate how plant communities respond to wildfires across a range of vegetation communities, soil types, and burn severities. We evaluated wildfire burn severity using the ground‐based Composite Burn Index adapted for treeless peatlands. Using paired burned–unburned plots, we quantified differences in the abundance of plant families and functional groups, vegetation diversity, and community composition. Multivariate differences in composition between burned and unburned areas were used as an index of community resilience to fire. Plots in heathland communities with shallow organic soils burned at the highest severities and had the greatest reductions in plant diversity and richness. There were significant declines in plot‐scale species richness and diversity with increasing burn severity. Graminoids were resilient to fire whilst Ericaceae tended to increase with higher severity. Bryophyte composition was substantially altered—pleurocarpous species declined and acrocarpous species increased with greater burn severity. Community resilience was related to ground layer burn severity with higher burn severity driving greater changes in communities. Wildfire effects on temperate peatlands are a function of fire weather and site environmental and ecological characteristics. Management policy should ensure that the risk of severe wildfires is mitigated to protect ecosystem function and biodiversity. This will require system‐specific fire management prescriptions across the gradient of peatland soil and vegetation types. Peatland wildfires are expected to be a growing problem under climate change, but we have little knowledge of how temperate systems respond to varying fire severity. We investigated differences in the diversity and composition of paired burned and unburned areas across five wildfires in the United Kingdom that burned at differing severities. Plant community diversity and resilience were significantly associated with both burn severity and community type with most differences occurring among cryptogams.
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Project description:The long-term effects of early life adversities on social capacities have been documented in humans and wild-caught former laboratory chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). However, former pet and entertainment chimpanzees have received little attention to date. This study aimed to investigate the long-term effects of early life experience on 18 former pet and entertainment chimpanzees, based on social grooming data collected at a primate rescue centre over a 12-year period. Moreover, we also focused on the possible short-term effects that alterations to group composition might have on grooming patterns. For this purpose, we compared stable and unstable periods (i.e. where alterations to group composition occurred). We used two individual social network measures to analyse the grooming activity and the distribution of grooming among group mates for each individual. We could show that wild-caught chimpanzees were significantly more selective regarding their grooming partners and spent less time grooming when compared to their captive born companions. We also found that individuals who were predominantly housed without conspecifics during infancy spent less time grooming compared to those who were predominantly housed with conspecifics during infancy. Furthermore, we found that alterations to the group composition had short-term effects on the distribution of social grooming from a more equal distribution during periods with a stable group composition towards a more unequal and selective distribution during unstable periods. Thus, we conclude that the social grooming networks of former pet and entertainment chimpanzees are shaped not only by long-term effects such as early life experience, but also by short-term effects such as alterations to group composition. Remarkably, we found not only captive born chimpanzees but also wild-caught individuals to adjust their grooming to socially challenging situations by modifying their grooming distribution in a similar way.
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Project description:Comparative animal studies have revealed the existence of inter-group differences in socially learned behaviours - so-called cultural variations. However, most research has drawn on geographically and thus environmentally separated populations, rendering it difficult to exclude genetic or ecological influences. To circumvent this problem, the behaviour of neighbouring groups from the same population can be juxtaposed - an approach which in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) has revealed cultural differences in the use of nut-cracking and ant-dipping tools. Here I apply archaeological methods to extend this approach to compare the qualities of termite fishing tools used by wild chimpanzees by comparing the neighbouring Kasekela and Mitumba communities at Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania. While no identifiable differences existed between the available plant species and associated vegetal components, members of the Kasekela community selected a larger array of raw materials and manufactured significantly longer and wider tools compared with the Mitumba community. Thus, cultural knowledge is reflected in differentiated behaviour on a small spatial scale. This study emphasizes the use of archaeological methods to identify cultural variation among living chimpanzee communities, adding to the growing research operating within the new field of Primate Archaeology.
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