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\"In 1856, Paul Du Chaillu ventured into the African jungle in search of a mythic beast, the gorilla. After wild encounters with vicious cannibals, deadly snakes, and tribal kings, Du Chaillu emerged with 20 preserved gorilla skins - two of which were stuffed and brought on tour - and walked smack dab into the biggest scientific debate of the time: Darwin's theory of evolution. Quickly, Du Chaillu's trophies went from objects of wonder to key pieces in an all-out intellectual war. With a wide range of characters, including Abraham Lincoln, Arthur Conan Doyle, P.T Barnum, William Thackeray, and of course, Charles Darwin, this is a one-of-a-kind book about a singular moment in history\"--Page 4 of cover.

1. Anthropocene defaunation is the global phenomenon of human-induced animal biodiversity loss. Understanding the patterns and process of defaunation is critical to predict outcomes for wildlife populations and cascading consequences for ecosystem function and human welfare. 2. We investigated a defaunation gradient in north-eastern Gabon by establishing 24 transects at varying distances (2-30 km) to rural villages and surveying the abundance and composition of vertebrate communities. Distance from village was positively correlated with observations of hunting (shotgun shells, campfires, hunters), making it a good proxy for hunting pressure. 3. Species diversity declined significantly with proximity to village, with mammal richness increasing by roughly 1-5 species every 10 km travelled away from a village. Compared to forest far from villages, the wildlife community near villages consisted of higher abundances of large birds and rodents and lower abundances of large mammals like monkeys and ungulates. 4. Distance to nearest village emerged as a key driver of the relative abundance of five of the six taxonomic guilds, indicating that the top-down force of hunting strongly influences large vertebrate community composition and structure. Several measures of vegetation structure also explained animal abundance, but these varied across taxonomic guilds. Forest elephants were the exception: no measured variable or combination of variables explained variation in elephant abundances. 5. Synthesis and applications. Hunting is concentrated within 10 km around villages, creating a hunting halo characterized by heavily altered animal communities composed of relatively small-bodied species. Although the strongest anthropogenic effects are relatively distance-limited, the linear increase in species richness shown here even at distances 30 km from villages suggests that hunting may have altered vertebrate abundances across the entire landscape. Central African forests store > 25% of the carbon in tropical forests and are home to 3000 endemic species, but roughly 53% of the region lies within the village hunting halo. Resource management strategies should take into account this hunting-induced spatial variation in animal communities. Near villages, resource management should focus on sustainable community-led hunting programmes that provide long-term supplies of wild meat to rural people. Resource management far from villages should focus on law enforcement and promoting industry practices that maintain remote tracts of land to preserve ecosystem services like carbon storage and biodiversity.

The evolutionary history of the human pygmy phenotype (small body size), a characteristic of African and Southeast Asian rainforest hunter-gatherers, is largely unknown. Here we use a genome-wide admixture mapping analysis to identify 16 genomic regions that are significantly associated with the pygmy phenotype in the Batwa, a rainforest hunter-gatherer population from Uganda (east central Africa). The identified genomic regions have multiple attributes that provide supporting evidence of genuine association with the pygmy phenotype, including enrichments for SNPs previously associated with stature variation in Europeans and for genes with growth hormone receptor and regulation functions. To test adaptive evolutionary hypotheses, we computed the haplotype-based integrated haplotype score (iHS) statistic and the level of population differentiation (F ST) between the Batwa and their agricultural neighbors, the Bakiga, for each genomic SNP. Both |iHS| and F ST values were significantly higher for SNPs within the Batwa pygmy phenotype-associated regions than the remainder of the genome, a signature of polygenic adaptation. In contrast, when we expanded our analysis to include Baka rainforest hunter-gatherers from Cameroon and Gabon (west central Africa) and Nzebi and Nzime neighboring agriculturalists, we did not observe elevated |iHS| or F ST values in these genomic regions. Together, these results suggest adaptive and at least partially convergent origins of the pygmy phenotype even within Africa, supporting the hypothesis that small body size confers a selective advantage for tropical rainforest hunter-gatherers but raising questions about the antiquity of this behavior.

Addressing today’s environmental challenges is intimately linked to understanding and improving natural resource governance institutions. As a result conservation initiatives are increasingly realizing the importance of integrating local perspectives of land tenure arrangements, natural resource rights, and local beliefs into conservation approaches. However, current work has not sufficiently considered the dynamic nature of natural resource governance institutions over time and the potential implications for current conservation interventions. We therefore explored how and why hunting governance has changed since the precolonial period in two ethnic hunting communities in Gabon, Central Africa, integrating various ethnographic methods with resource-use mapping, and a historic literature review. In both communities, hunting governance has undergone significant changes since the precolonial period. A closed-access, lineage-based system of resource use with strict penalties for trespassing, has evolved into a more open-access system, in which the influence of customary governance systems, including magico-political aspects, has declined. These changes have occurred mainly in response to policies and governance structures put in place by the colonial government and postindependence, early state laws. This included a policy of merging villages, the introduction of more modern hunting techniques such as guns and wire cables, and a shift from community to government ownership of the land. Current governance structures are thus the product of a complex mixture of customary, colonial and state influences. These findings suggest that a historical perspective of resource governance, gained through in-depth and long-term engagement with local communities, can provide important insights for community-based conservation approaches, such as helping to identify potential causes and perceptions of environmental change and to design more suitable conservation initiatives with local people.

The expansion of Bantu languages, which started around 5,000 years before present in west/central Africa and spread all throughout sub-Saharan Africa, may represent one of the major and most rapid demographic movements in the history of the human species. Although the genetic footprints of this expansion have been unmasked through the analyses of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA lineages, information on the genetic impact of this massive movement and on the genetic composition of pre-Bantu populations is still scarce. Here, we analyze an extensive collection of Y-chromosome markers--41 single nucleotide polymorphisms and 18 short tandem repeats--in 883 individuals from 22 Bantu-speaking agriculturalist populations and 3 Pygmy hunter-gatherer populations from Gabon and Cameroon. Our data reveal a recent origin for most paternal lineages in west Central African populations most likely resulting from the expansion of Bantu-speaking farmers that erased the more ancient Y-chromosome diversity found in this area. However, some traces of ancient paternal lineages are observed in these populations, mainly among hunter-gatherers. These results are at odds with those obtained from mtDNA analyses, where high frequencies of ancient maternal lineages are observed, and substantial maternal gene flow from hunter-gatherers to Bantu farmers has been suggested. These differences are most likely explained by sociocultural factors such as patrilocality. We also find the intriguing presence of paternal lineages belonging to Eurasian haplogroup R1b1*, which might represent footprints of demographic expansions in central Africa not directly related to the Bantu expansion. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Despite widespread recognition of the major threat to tropical forest biological diversity and local food security posed by unsustainable bushmeat hunting, virtually no long-term studies tracking the socioecological dynamics of hunting systems have been conducted. We interviewed local hunters and collected detailed hunting data to investigate changes in offtake and hunter characteristics over 10 years (2001-2010) in Dibouka and Kouagna villages, central Gabon, in the context of hunter recollections of longer term trends since the 1950s. To control for changes in hunter behavior, such as trap location and characteristics, we report hunting offtake data per trap. Our results suggest the hunting area was already highly depleted by 2001; local hunters reported that 16 large-bodied prey species had become rare or locally extirpated over the last 60 years. Overall, we observed no significant declines in hunting offtake or changes in species composition from 2001 to 2010, and offtakes per trap increased slightly between 2004 and 2010. However, trapping distance from the villages increased, and there was a switch in hunting techniques; a larger proportion of the catch was hunted with guns in 2010. The number of hunters declined by 20% from 2004 to 2010, and male livelihood activities shifted away from hunting. Hunters with the lowest hunting incomes in 2004 were more likely than successful hunters to have moved away from the village by 2010 (often in response to alternative employment opportunities). Therefore, changes in trap success (potentially related to biological factors) were interacting with system-level changes in hunter number and composition (related to external socioeconomic factors) to produce a relatively static overall offtake. Our results highlight the importance of understanding the small-scale context of hunting to correctly interpret changes or apparent stasis in hunting effort and offtake over time. No obstante el amplio reconocimiento de la amenaza que representa la cacería no sustentable de animales silvestres para la biodiversidad de los bosques tropicales y la seguridad alimentaria local, virtualmente no se han desarrollado estudios a largo plazo sobre la dinámica socioecológica de los sistemas de cacería. Entrevistamos a cazadores locales y recolectamos datos de cacería para investigar cambios en la captura y las características de cazadores a lo largo de 10 años (2001-2010) en las aldeas de Dibouka y Kouaga, Gabón central, en el contexto de remembranzas de cazadores de tendencias a largo plazo desde la década de 1950. Para controlar cambios en la conducta de cazadores, como la localización y características de trampas, reportamos datos de captura por cacería por trampa. Nuestros resultados sugieren que el área de cacería ya estaba agotada en 2001; los cazadores locales reportaron que 16 especies de presas de talla grande se han convertido en raras o han sido extirpadas localmente en los últimos 60 años. En general, no observamos declinaciones significativas en la captura ni cambios en la composición de especies de 2001 a 2010, y las capturas por trampa incrementaron ligeramente entre 2004 y 2010. Sin embargo, la distancia a las trampas desde las aldeas incrementó y hubo un cambio en las técnicas de caza; una mayor proporción de la captura era cazada con armas en 2010. El número de cazadores declinó en 20% de 2004 a 2010, y la actividades de los varones variaron de la cacería. Fue más probable que los cazadores con los menores ingresos por cacería en 2004 se hubieran mudado de la aldea en 2010 que los cazadores exitosos (a menudo una respuesta a oportunidades de empleo alternativo). Por lo tanto, los cambios en el éxito de trampeo (potencialmente relacionado con factores biológicos) interactuaron con cambios a nivel de sistema en el número y composición (relacionada con factores socioeconómicos externos) de cazadores para producir una captura total relativamente estática. Nuestros resultados resaltan la importancia de entender el contexto de la cacería a escala pequeña para interpretar correctamente los cambios o estasis aparente del esfuerzo de caza y la captura a lo largo del tiempo.

This article focuses on the ritual performance of relations between Babongo Pygmies and their neighbours in Gabon. Whereas the Babongo occupy socially subordinate positions vis-à-vis neighbouring populations, the bwiti initiation ritual inverses this relational form by placing Pygmies at its mythical point of origin. The Babongo, while performing at rituals, embody the \"Pygmy\" as he is construed by his neighbours. However, the profound changes of the bwiti ritual during the 20th century have facilitated the emancipation of the Babongo. In becoming full-blown ritual actors, they enact bwiti's origin myth for their own sake. Thus subaltern actors emerge as central participants on the ritual scene.

ABSTRACT IN FRENCH: Une présence humaine vieille de 40,000 ans a été mise en évidence dans le nord-ouest du Gabon. L'analyse du paléo-environnement en complément aux travaux archéologiques a permis de proposer la présence d'un milieu forestier depuis au moins 6000 à 9000 ans. Ceci laisse penser que les populations tardives de chasseurs-collecteurs et les premières communautés villageoises ont effectivement vécues en forêt. Cette étude de cas est, pour le Gabon et pour l'Afrique Centrale forestière, la plus vieille trace directe d'une association milieu forestier - habitats humains couvrant plusieurs millénaires. // ABSTRACT IN ENGLISH: Evidence of human occupation reaching back to 40,000 years ago in North-West Gabon has been identified. A paleo-environmental study coupled with archaeological research show that forests have been present for at least 6,000 to 9,000 years and therefore the last hunter-gatherers and early villagers lived in a forest environment. This case study presents the oldest direct evidence linking human settlements with a forest environment lasting several millennia for Gabon and the forested part of Central Africa.