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"Gorilla gorilla"
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Behavioral Variation in Gorillas: Evidence of Potential Cultural Traits
The question of whether any species except humans exhibits culture has generated much debate, partially due to the difficulty of providing conclusive evidence from observational studies in the wild. A starting point for demonstrating the existence of culture that has been used for many species including chimpanzees and orangutans is to show that there is geographic variation in the occurrence of particular behavioral traits inferred to be a result of social learning and not ecological or genetic influences. Gorillas live in a wide variety of habitats across Africa and they exhibit flexibility in diet, behavior, and social structure. Here we apply the 'method of exclusion' to look for the presence/absence of behaviors that could be considered potential cultural traits in well-habituated groups from five study sites of the two species of gorillas. Of the 41 behaviors considered, 23 met the criteria of potential cultural traits, of which one was foraging related, nine were environment related, seven involved social interactions, five were gestures, and one was communication related. There was a strong positive correlation between behavioral dissimilarity and geographic distance among gorilla study sites. Roughly half of all variation in potential cultural traits was intraspecific differences (i.e. variability among sites within a species) and the other 50% of potential cultural traits were differences between western and eastern gorillas. Further research is needed to investigate if the occurrence of these traits is influenced by social learning. These findings emphasize the importance of investigating cultural traits in African apes and other species to shed light on the origin of human culture.
Journal Article
Gorillas
\"This photo-illustrated book for early readers tells the story of a troop of gorillas spending the day in the rain forest\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Origin of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum in gorillas
Plasmodium falciparum
is the most prevalent and lethal of the malaria parasites infecting humans, yet the origin and evolutionary history of this important pathogen remain controversial. Here we develop a single-genome amplification strategy to identify and characterize
Plasmodium
spp. DNA sequences in faecal samples from wild-living apes. Among nearly 3,000 specimens collected from field sites throughout central Africa, we found
Plasmodium
infection in chimpanzees (
Pan troglodytes
) and western gorillas (
Gorilla gorilla
), but not in eastern gorillas (
Gorilla beringei
) or bonobos (
Pan paniscus
). Ape plasmodial infections were highly prevalent, widely distributed and almost always made up of mixed parasite species. Analysis of more than 1,100 mitochondrial, apicoplast and nuclear gene sequences from chimpanzees and gorillas revealed that 99% grouped within one of six host-specific lineages representing distinct
Plasmodium
species within the subgenus
Laverania
. One of these from western gorillas comprised parasites that were nearly identical to
P. falciparum
. In phylogenetic analyses of full-length mitochondrial sequences, human
P. falciparum
formed a monophyletic lineage within the gorilla parasite radiation. These findings indicate that
P. falciparum
is of gorilla origin and not of chimpanzee, bonobo or ancient human origin.
Human malaria parasite traced to a fellow primate
The evolutionary origin of
Plasmodium falciparum
, the most prevalent and lethal of the malaria parasites infecting humans, is much debated. Genetic analysis of thousands of fecal samples from wild-living African apes show that the parasites found in the western gorillas — rather than those of chimpanzees or bonobos — are most closely related to the human parasite. The data suggest that all extant human strains of the parasite evolved from a single host transfer event. The new findings are also relevant to the current antimalaria campaign, as they point to potential
Plasmodium
reservoirs in apes.
The evolutionary origin of the human malaria parasite
Plasmodium falciparum
has been much debated. Genetic analysis of a large number of faecal samples from wild-living African apes now shows that
Plasmodium
parasites from Western gorillas are most closely related to the human parasite. The data suggest that human
P. falciparum
evolved from a gorilla parasite after a single host transfer event.
Journal Article
I wish I was a gorilla
Introduces gorillas, describing their physical features, what they eat, where they live, and how they care for their young.
Book
The extent of western lowland gorilla social relationships within and between groups
The nature of western lowland gorilla social relationships within and between groups is largely understudied, partly due to the challenges of monitoring associations between individuals who live in neighboring groups. In this study, we examined the social relationships of four western lowland gorilla groups in the Ndoki landscape of northern Republic of Congo. To do so, we compiled all-occurrence social interaction and silverback nearest neighbor social networks from data collected during daily group follows conducted over several years. We observed a total of 5,923 dyadic all-occurrence social interactions (1,350 ± 489 per group, 138 intergroup interactions) and 54,989 dyadic silverback nearest neighbor associations (13,747 ± 3,963 observations per group, 105 nearest neighbor observations of intergroup partners during group scans). For all groups, we found that males were more social than females, younger individuals were more social than older gorillas, and slightly greater rates of social behaviors were observed during periods of higher fruit availability. While there was a considerable amount of interindividual variation in social behavior, the network of social interactions demonstrated a large extent of social relationships within and between groups. Additionally, we performed simulated network removals to assess the impact on social dynamics. Across all groups and the total population, the removal of blackback and immature individuals markedly decreased the number of intra- and intergroup relationships (>60% decrease). The documented extent of western lowland gorilla social relationships has direct implications for the conservation of species with multi-level social dynamics. Gaining clarity on the ways in which western lowland gorilla groups naturally occur in the wild, not only provides a greater understanding for their conservation, but also offers insights for managing their social dynamics within captive environments.
Journal Article
Endangered gorillas
\"Discusses gorillas, why they are endangered, and how they are being helped\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Mountain gorilla genomes reveal the impact of long-term population decline and inbreeding
Mountain gorillas are an endangered great ape subspecies and a prominent focus for conservation, yet we know little about their genomic diversity and evolutionary past. We sequenced whole genomes from multiple wild individuals and compared the genomes of all four Gorilla subspecies. We found that the two eastern subspecies have experienced a prolonged population decline over the past 100,000 years, resulting in very low genetic diversity and an increased overall burden of deleterious variation. A further recent decline in the mountain gorilla population has led to extensive inbreeding, such that individuals are typically homozygous at 34% of their sequence, leading to the purging of severely deleterious recessive mutations from the population. We discuss the causes of their decline and the consequences for their future survival.
Journal Article
Social negotiation and “accents” in Western lowland gorillas’ gestural communication
Recent findings on chimpanzee infants’ gestural development show that they use some gesture types flexibly and adjust them depending on their interaction partner and social context, suggesting that gestural communication is partly learnt and partly genetically determined. However, how gesture types are shaped by social and demographic factors remains unclear. We addressed this question by focusing on gesture type morphology and conducted a fined-grained analysis of gestural form during intraspecific social-play interactions in two captive groups of Western lowland gorillas (
Gorilla gorilla gorilla
). We focused on the most frequent gesture types (
beat chest
,
slap body
,
slap ground
and
touch body
) produced by subadults (infants, juveniles and adolescents). We considered twelve morphological gesture characteristics (e.g., horizontal and vertical hand trajectories, fingers flexion and spread). Our multifactorial investigation shows that morphological characteristics of distinct gesture types can be shaped by social factors, namely signaller’s sociodemographic characteristics (group and kinship), signaller’s behavioural characteristics (body posture) and context-related characteristics (recipient’s sex, attentional state and position in the signaller’s visual field). We nurtured the lively debate concerning gesture origins by revealing the existence of “accents” in non-verbal communication and the highly variable adjustment of gestural form to different conspecifics and interactional characteristics, which supports the revised social negotiation hypothesis.
Journal Article