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The opening of this vital new book centers on a series of graves memorializing baboons killed near Amboseli National Park in Kenya in 2009--a stark image that emphasizes both the close emotional connection between primate researchers and their subjects and the intensely human qualities of the animals.Primates in the Real Worldgoes on to trace primatology's shift from short-term expeditions designed to help overcome centuries-old myths to the field's arrival as a recognized science sustained by a complex web of international collaborations. Considering a series of pivotal episodes spanning the twentieth century, Georgina Montgomery shows how individuals both within and outside of the scientific community gradually liberated themselves from primate folklore to create primate science. Achieved largely through a movement from the lab to the field as the primary site of observation, this development reflected an urgent and ultimately extremely productive reassessment of what constitutes \"natural\" behavior for primates. An important contribution to the history of science and of women's roles in science, as well as to animal studies and the exploration of the animal-human boundary, Montgomery's engagingly written narrative provides the general reader with the most accessible overview to date of this enduringly fascinating field of study.

Despite decades of research, much uncertainty remains regarding the selection pressures responsible for brain size variation. Whilst the influential social brain hypothesis once garnered extensive support, more recent studies have failed to find support for a link between brain size and sociality. Instead, it appears there is now substantial evidence suggesting ecology better predicts brain size in both primates and carnivores. Here, different models of brain evolution were tested, and the relative importance of social, ecological, and life-history traits were assessed on both overall encephalisation and specific brain regions. In primates, evidence is found for consistent associations between brain size and ecological factors, particularly diet; however, evidence was also found advocating sociality as a selection pressure driving brain size. In carnivores, evidence suggests ecological variables, most notably home range size, are influencing brain size; whereas, no support is found for the social brain hypothesis, perhaps reflecting the fact sociality appears to be limited to a select few taxa. Life-history associations reveal complex selection mechanisms to be counterbalancing the costs associated with expensive brain tissue through extended developmental periods, reduced fertility, and extended maximum lifespan. Future studies should give careful consideration of the methods chosen for measuring brain size, investigate both whole brain and specific brain regions where possible, and look to integrate multiple variables, thus fully capturing all of the potential factors influencing brain size.

Our understanding of the evolutionary history of primates is undergoing continual revision due to ongoing genome sequencing efforts. Bolstered by growing fossil evidence, these data have led to increased acceptance of once controversial hypotheses regarding phylogenetic relationships, hybridization and introgression, and the biogeographical history of primate groups. Among these findings is a pattern of recent introgression between species within all major primate groups examined to date, though little is known about introgression deeper in time. To address this and other phylogenetic questions, here, we present new reference genome assemblies for 3 Old World monkey (OWM) species: Colobus angolensis ssp. palliatus (the black and white colobus), Macaca nemestrina (southern pig-tailed macaque), and Mandrillus leucophaeus (the drill). We combine these data with 23 additional primate genomes to estimate both the species tree and individual gene trees using thousands of loci. While our species tree is largely consistent with previous phylogenetic hypotheses, the gene trees reveal high levels of genealogical discordance associated with multiple primate radiations. We use strongly asymmetric patterns of gene tree discordance around specific branches to identify multiple instances of introgression between ancestral primate lineages. In addition, we exploit recent fossil evidence to perform fossil-calibrated molecular dating analyses across the tree. Taken together, our genome-wide data help to resolve multiple contentious sets of relationships among primates, while also providing insight into the biological processes and technical artifacts that led to the disagreements in the first place.

Monkeypox, a vesiculo-pustular rash illness, was initially discovered to cause human infection in 1970 through the World Health Organization (WHO)-sponsored efforts of the Commission to Certify Smallpox Eradication in Western Africa and the Congo Basin. The virus had been discovered to cause a nonhuman primate rash illness in 1958, and was thus named monkeypox. The causative agents of monkeypox and smallpox diseases both are species of Orthopoxvirus. Orthopoxvirus monkeypox, when it infects humans as an epizootic, produces a similar clinical picture to that of ordinary human smallpox. Since 1970, extensive epidemiology, virology, ecology and public health research has enabled better characterization of monkeypox virus and the associated human disease. This work reviews the progress in this body of research, and reviews studies of this “newly” emerging zoonotic disease.

The percentage of human deaths caused by interpersonal violence reflects our membership of a particularly violent clade of mammals, although changes in socio-political organization have led to marked variations in this proportion. Phylogenetic roots of human lethal violence The philosopher Thomas Hobbes said that people are inherently violent; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, that people are usually peaceable. The reality presumably lies somewhere in between, but where? Here José María Gomez et al . present a phylogenetic analysis of intraspecies lethal violence in more than 1,000 mammalian species. They show that whereas lethal violence is almost unknown in some clades, such as bats and whales, it is a particular feature of primates. The level of lethal violence during human prehistory inferred from empirical observations is in line with the phylogenetic prediction, but during most historic periods was higher than the phylogenetic predictions. In modern times, cultural practices appear to have modulated the tendency towards violence that nature has given us. The psychological, sociological and evolutionary roots of conspecific violence in humans are still debated, despite attracting the attention of intellectuals for over two millennia 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 . Here we propose a conceptual approach towards understanding these roots based on the assumption that aggression in mammals, including humans, has a significant phylogenetic component. By compiling sources of mortality from a comprehensive sample of mammals, we assessed the percentage of deaths due to conspecifics and, using phylogenetic comparative tools, predicted this value for humans. The proportion of human deaths phylogenetically predicted to be caused by interpersonal violence stood at 2%. This value was similar to the one phylogenetically inferred for the evolutionary ancestor of primates and apes, indicating that a certain level of lethal violence arises owing to our position within the phylogeny of mammals. It was also similar to the percentage seen in prehistoric bands and tribes, indicating that we were as lethally violent then as common mammalian evolutionary history would predict. However, the level of lethal violence has changed through human history and can be associated with changes in the socio-political organization of human populations. Our study provides a detailed phylogenetic and historical context against which to compare levels of lethal violence observed throughout our history.

Uganda recently declared the end of its sixth Sudan virus (SUDV) outbreak; the prior outbreak having ended just two years earlier. Efficacious vaccines are licensed for protection against Ebola virus (EBOV), but there is no evidence that these afford clinical protection against other orthoebolaviruses. While EBOV has been extensively characterized in humans and animal models, the evidence base for SUDV is more limited due to the lower frequency of outbreaks and cases to date. It is therefore valuable to consider how, and to what extent, our knowledge and evidence base on EBOV can be leveraged to support the development of countermeasures against SUDV. This rapid review aims to examine and compare the existing evidence on the natural history of EBOV and SUDV in non-human primates (NHP). Overall, 24 studies (described in 25 articles) were identified for inclusion: 19 evaluated EBOV, four evaluated SUDV, and one evaluated both. Results confirm that EBOV and SUDV infection result in very similar disease in NHP, characterized by a severe systemic inflammatory response and disseminated intravascular coagulopathy, leading to tissue and organ damage and fluid loss. Clinical presentation and progression, clinical pathology observations, and characteristics of the host immune response were consistent across viruses. There is some indication that EBOV may result in slightly faster disease progression and marginally higher mortality than SUDV, though there is substantial overlap, and minor differences are also observed with different EBOV variants. While infection of rhesus and cynomolgus macaques with SUDV or EBOV are widely accepted models of human disease, an equivalent comparison of available human data would be valuable.

Hundreds of genes are upregulated in response to pathogen infection. These genes’ sequences often diverge across mammals, to counteract rapid pathogen evolution. However, the transcriptional divergence of these genes, their relative levels before and after infection in different host species, remains poorly understood. We studied this divergence by comparing gene expression before and after viral stimulation in cells from primates and rodents. We developed a method to identify orthologs strongly upregulated in one species that are unchanged in response to stimulus in another species. Using human and mouse data, we detected 578 transcriptionally divergent orthologous genes. For example, genes related to the NFκB complex are only upregulated in mouse. While most divergent genes do not belong to the same cellular process, several pathways and protein complexes are enriched in this set, suggesting that divergence in immune responses between closely related mammals is limited to specific modules rather than involving entire pathways. Transcriptional divergence between human and mouse orthologs was also observed when ortholog expression from different primates and rodents were compared, when responses were studied in several other cell types, and was recapitulated at the chromatin level, using histone mark patterns that denote active promoter regions. Surprisingly, these transcriptional changes were associated with evolutionary changes in coding sequences only when the genes are lowly expressed. In summary, we found genes whose orthologs diverge between primates and rodents in response to immune stimulation. Some of these genes are constitutively expressed in one species even before infection, potentially facilitating rapid antiviral activity that may be linked to clade-specific adaptation to confer greater resistance against pathogens. Further studies are required to test which of these transcriptional changes are adaptive, and what are their functional consequences. Moreover, comparative studies on diverse infections can point to additional species-specific responses and how they enable different species to overcome infection.

Abstract The search for common characteristics between the musical abilities of humans and other animal species is still taking its first steps. One of the most promising aspects from a comparative point of view is the analysis of rhythmic components, which are crucial features of human communicative performance but also well-identifiable patterns in the vocal displays of other species. Therefore, the study of rhythm is becoming essential to understand the mechanisms of singing behavior and the evolution of human communication. Recent findings provided evidence that particular rhythmic structures occur in human music and some singing animal species, such as birds and rock hyraxes, but only 2 species of nonhuman primates have been investigated so far (Indri indri and Hylobates lar). Therefore, our study aims to consistently broaden the list of species studied regarding the presence of rhythmic categories. We investigated the temporal organization in the singing of 3 species of crested gibbons (Nomascus gabriellae, Nomascus leucogenys, and Nomascus siki) and found that the most prominent rhythmic category was isochrony. Moreover, we found slight variation in songs’ tempo among species, with N. gabriellae and N. siki singing with a temporal pattern involving a gradually increasing tempo (a musical accelerando), and N. leucogenys with a more regular pattern. Here, we show how the prominence of a peak at the isochrony establishes itself as a shared characteristic in the small apes considered so far.

Letter to the Editor