The PanAf has a new paper out examing the microbiomes of chimpanzees across their range!
tl;dr:
Genetics/geography are correlated with prokaryotic and parasite community dissimilarity. When controlling for these, vegetation also has an influence on prokaryotic community composition.
We also found some site-specific differences in prokaryote community composition (though not in Western chimps).
We discuss how regional tool use for resource extraction might be influencing site-specific differences & compare the patterns observed in chimps to those in humans.
In the last months look at all we have accomplished:
Finished chimp matching at XenonBloom (bye bye algae fishing chimps...for now ;) )
Finished chimp matching at SoaringLeaf and our first chimp matching site truly run by a mod and it was a HUGE success - thank you wonderful Heidi/Boleyn!!!
Opened the new Cameroon-Nigeria chimpanzee site GlowingCloud
Started GORILLA matching at Green Toadstool - with an all new focus on silverbacks and groups thanks to the great ideas of, and lead by, our mod Anja/AnLand!
We did some housekeeping at New Dragonfly an identified all the unique chimps there - a big thank you to the scimods Paula/PauDG and Nuria/NuriaM for this big effort!
There has also been a huge effort at site clean up by our amazing team lead by Karen/Kikilee3 and Lucia/luca-chimp who are taking care of the videos with the need_id tags and wrong tags! Thank you ladies :)
We have a whole new set of "how to" videos curated by Carol/Eweforia HERE
We also have LOTS of new chimp matching tools including all the wonderful mug shots (including butt mug shots) curated by burdock/Libby and Carol/Eweforia
We just launched CHIMP matching at GreenToadstool which features some very exotic blond chimps and some clever honey collection with tools from a central chimp population
A blond chimp! get involved in chimp matching at GreenToadstool to find her again!
The three most often seen and recognized chimps (thanks to their unique features) even inspired an epic ballad by TheWeez15/Zaneb aka Sev : Our Leopard-Muzzled Grock
A big thank you and big pant hoots always to our awesome mod team especially Heike/HeikeW and Zuzi/yshish who are a massive support during these busy times! and as well to our tech support hero Colleen/sassydumbledore, you are THE BEST!
We are looking for new chimp matchers, check out THIS POST and sign up for the team calls :)
It has been believed for years that there
was only one African elephant species, the savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana),
and the small forest elephant was a subspecies. It was only some years ago that
the forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) was finally considered as
another African elephant species, when research had found that these two
elephants are genetically distinct from one another.
I say finally, because by recognizing their
status as species and not as subspecies, one can best manage a designed
elephant conservation strategy. Forest elephants are ecologically, socially,
morphologically and genetically different to savanna elephants, and that´s why
a strategy particularly designed is needed. The decline of the forest elephant
population represents the decline of an entire endangered species, and not just
of a sub-population.
So now we have two recognized African
elephant species, the forest and the savanna elephants; but really? Two
species? what about the Congo Pygmy elephants, have you ever heard about them?
A bit of history:
the first supposed pygmy elephant was evidenced
in a Zoo in Germany (Hamburg Zoo) and then moved to New York, but the authors
described it as a very small forest elephant found in Congo and South Western
Uganda.
The zoo elephant was a young male called
Congo and described by Noack (1906) as Elephas africanus pumilio, later
known as Loxodonta pumilio or fransseni. Congo was a small young
male with very round ears that reminded a lot of the recently known to science
forest elephant (described at the beginning of the 20th century by
Matschie, 1900)1. Ever since their discovery, the pygmy elephant
status has been debated. Some scientists have supported their existence, most
haven´t.
Although the disputed pygmy elephants of
the Congo basin are thought to be another separate species by cryptozoologists,
it is unanimously believed that those are actually forest elephants.
One explanation to why scientists thought
to have found a different species of elephants back in the 20th
century could be that they were at that time unfamiliar with the growth patterns
and social structure of elephants and thus what they described to be a herd of
very small elephants, was actually a herd where the big matriarch had died and
thus there remained young females and calves.
There are also voices that claim that this
unusually small size of the forest elephants that made the scientists believe
in the existence of a third species was due to an early maturity as a result of
environmental conditions.
The scientists conclude that the specific
taxon Loxodonta pumilio (or Loxodonta fransseni) should be
abandoned; so to the question, yes, there are two different African elephant
species: savanna and forest elephants.
Congo,
a presumed pygmy elephant, now classified as Loxodonta cyclotis (African
forest elephant).
How different are they?
The forest elephants are smaller and thus
lighter. Their skin is smoother, with longer hairs (mostly on their trunks) and
long eyelashes, that protect their eyes while they walk through the dense
forest. Their ears are rounder (cycle=round, otis=ear), the savanna elephant
ears have the African continent shape. Like the savanna elephants, both sexes
have tusks, but those of the forest species are more or less straight and
thinner. The forest elephants have 5 toenails on the front feet and 4 on the
hind feet (like the Asian elephants), while the savanna elephants have 4 on the
front feet and 3 on the back.
The forest elephants live in smaller family
groups (and often more disperse) than savanna elephants and have a different
diet, the latter´s consisting basically of grass, whereas the forest elephants
eat more browse, tree leaves and fruits.
What´s their geographical range?
As their name suggests, the African forest
elephants live in Africa’s forests. While they once inhabited a larger range,
they now are confined to the tropical forests of Equatorial West and Central
Africa.
The geographical range of the African
savanna elephants is wider, but in some areas their distribution overlaps with
that of the forest elephants in Central and Eastern Africa. Some scientists
talk about “hybrid zones” facilitated by poaching and habitat modifications,
and defend the theory that these species can interbreed over more than one
generation, which demonstrates that hybrids are fertile2.
Which African elephant species do we see in Chimp&See?
In almost every Chimp&See site where we
have found elephants, we have seen forest elephants. But due to that territory
overlapping there have been some sites where the elephants weren´t so small
anymore. I am referring to Green Snowflake and Restless Star, where both
species coexist, whose range overlap and where both species may be inter
breeding, and to Soaring Leaf, where we have seen savanna elephants.
If you want to see more awesome elephant videos, check our Elephant Discussion Board. Please feel free to post any comment or anything that you want to know about elephants in that board!
Ref:
1. 1. Groves, C. P., & Grubb, P.
(2000). Are there Pygmy Elephants?. Elephant, 2(4), 8-10. Doi: 10.22237/elephant/1521732181
2. Mondol, Samrat & Moltke,
Ida & Hart, John & Keigwin, Michael & Brown, Lisa & Stephens,
Matthew & Wasser, Samuel. (2015). New evidence for hybrid zones of forest
and savanna elephants in Central and West Africa. Molecular ecology. 24.
10.1111/mec.13472
A new large-scale study uncovers recent genetic connectivity between chimpanzee subspecies despite past isolation events
Much like us, chimpanzees, occupy diverse habitats and exhibit extensive behavioural variation. Human genetic variation however changes along a gradient, with no races and some areas of local genetic adaptation. Chimpanzees, on the other hand, are divided into four subspecies separated by geographic barriers like rivers. Previous studies attempting to understand chimpanzee population histories have been limited either by a poor geographic distribution of samples, samples of uncertain origin or different types of genetic markers. Due to these obstacles, some studies have shown clear separations between chimpanzee subspecies while others suggest a genetic gradient across the species as in humans.
Chimpanzee dung samples were collected across Africa to determine if populations were recently connected despite historical barriers to gene flow.
To resolve this dichotomy, researchers from the Pan African Programme: The Cultured Chimpanzee (PanAf) at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and a team of international researchers, collected over 5000 fecal samples from 55 sites in 18 countries across the chimpanzee range over 8 years. This is by far the most complete sampling of the species to date, with a known location of origin for every sample, thus addressing the sampling limitations of previous studies. “Collecting these samples was often a daunting task for our amazing field teams. The chimpanzees were almost all unhabituated to human presence, so it took a lot of patience, skill and luck to find chimpanzee dung at each of the sites,” explains Mimi Arandjelovic, co-director of the PanAf and senior author of the study.
Anthony Agbor, co-author of the study and field site manager at several PanAf sites, prepares samples for processing in the field.
Jack Lester, first author of the study, explains: “We used rapidly-evolving genetic markers that reflect the recent population history of species and, in combination with the dense sampling from across their range, we show that chimpanzee subspecies have been connected, or, more likely, reconnected, for extended periods during the most recent maximal expansion of African forests.”
So although chimpanzees were separated into different subspecies in their distant past, prior to the rise of recent anthropogenic disturbances, the proposed subspecies-specific geographic barriers were permeable to chimpanzee dispersal. Paolo Gratton, co-author of the study and researcher at the Università di Roma “Tor Vergata” adds: “It is widely thought that chimpanzees persisted in forest refugia during glacial periods, which has likely been responsible for isolating groups of populations which we now recognize as subspecies. Our results from fast-evolving microsatellite DNA markers however indicate that genetic connectivity in the most recent millennia mainly mirrors geographic distance and local factors, masking the older subspecies subdivisions.”
Furthermore, “these results suggest that the great behavioural diversity observed in chimpanzees are therefore not due to local genetic adaptation but that they rely on behavioural flexibility, much like humans, to respond to changes in their environment,” notes Hjalmar Kuehl, co-director of the PanAf and researcher at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research.
The team also observed signals of reductions in diversity at some sites that appeared to be associated with recent anthropogenic pressures. In fact, at some locations PanAf teams visited no, or few, chimpanzees were detected despite recordings of their presence within the last decades. “Although not unforeseen, we were disheartened to already find the influence of human impacts at some field sites where genetic diversity was markedly lower than what we expected,” says Jack Lester.
These results highlight the importance of genetic connectivity for chimpanzees in their recent history. “Every effort should be made to re-establish and maintain dispersal corridors across their range, with perhaps special attention to trans-national protected areas,” notes Christophe Boesch, co-director of the PanAf and director of the Wild Chimpanzee Foundation. Chimpanzees are known to be adaptable to human disturbance and can survive in human-modified landscapes, however, habitat loss, zoonotic diseases, bushmeat and pet trades are all threats to chimpanzee survival. These results warn of future critical impacts on their genetic health and viability if habitat fragmentation and isolation continue unabated.
As the chimpanzees were not habituated to human presence, scat samples were used as sources of DNA for the study. Here a chimpanzee from one of the study areas is recorded by a PanAf camera trap. At the Chimp&See citizen science project, all PanAf videos can be viewed and annotated.
Today starts the new lunar year – also called the Chinese New Year, but celebrated in many Asian countries. 2021 is the Year of the Ox and as every year, we want to take the opportunity to highlight the respective species – or a close African relative – from the Chimp&See cameratrap video footage. This year, it is of course the forest buffalo!
African forest buffalos (Syncerus caffer nanus) are a subspecies of the African buffalo – smaller than the ones you see in the savannahs of South and East Africa, but still impressive in their build. Adults of both sexes have short C-shaped horns that point back. Coloration is dark reddish to brown with an even darker line down the spine and darker lower legs. The ears have adorable black and white fringes.
In the past five years since we started with your help to analyze our video footage, we’ve seen forest buffalos relatively rarely. This all changed with starting the Twin Oaks (Loango, Gabon) site in collaboration with the Ozouga Loango Chimpanzee Project. The mixed landscape consisting of several habitat types varying from coastal lagoons, mangrove swamps, coastal forest, secondary and primary forest and open savannah seem to be ideally suited for this species. They can graze in the forest clearings and use the wetter habitats for wallowing to keep insects away. They usually have some help with the latter part from yellow-billed oxpeckers cleaning patiently their coats.
Two yellow-billed oxpeckers cleaning a forest buffalo's fur. Original video here.
Forest buffalos are seen at night and day. They sometimes discover our cameratrap and react to this in different ways. Please enjoy some video highlights from our forest buffalos, have some good Asian food of your choice, and a happy and prosperous new year!
2020 has been a difficult year for many and it seems to us that Chimp&See – as other online citizen science projects as well – could provide a little bit of relief and entertainment amongst the turmoil in the world. We had a huge spike in classifications and new volunteers. We are grateful for all the help and support for our project. We love your interest in annotating our wildlife videos from all over Africa, especially the chimpanzees, and your questions while doing so. During the year, we worked on four sites that are in various stages of near-completion and a mini-project.
The science team also published the first Chimp&See paper in Ecology and Evolution that investigated how reliably volunteers at Chimp&See can identify individual chimpanzees from cameratrap footage only. For this, they compared the matching results of Chimp&See volunteers with chimp identifications by scientists from the same videos. The scientists knew those (habituated) chimpanzees from fieldwork. The results are promising: despite identifying fewer chimpanzees in the videos (only about 50% of the chimpanzees present ended up to be successfully matched to another chimp), the Chimp&See volunteers could reliably identify the members of this “test community”. That means, they identified (nearly) the same number of chimpanzees, but identified each chimp less often. The team created a great video abstract that you can watch here.
Before Christmas, we asked you about your “Best of 2020” – your biggest surprise, creepiest and funniest clips, the best camera reaction, and of course your favorite chimpanzee. We compiled all nominations, made poll, and here are the results from your votes:
Favorite chimp 2020: Freddy - or at Chimp&See called Loango-Freddy
The funniest video 2020: giant kingfisher vs. bird
The creepiest video 2020: his gait looks painful, but elephant Hawking is our hero!
The biggest surprise 2020: no comment needed ;-)
The best camera reaction: researchers having fun
If you missed the voting stage, but want to see all nominations – please check out the playlist on our youtube channel (and subscribe for more - we post every Wednesday!)
What will happen in 2021? Well, we have many more research sites coming, needing furthermore your help to annotate the videos to the species level in three workflows: ‘Species ID’, ‘MonkeySee’, and ‘Trotters ID’. Currently, the Central African site Green Toadstool is in the classification phase and chimp matching is starting atSoaring Leaf – a West African site – on January 25th. Check out the intro post, read the instructions, and become part of the team!
We will also move forward with the leopard and elephant mini-projects in 2021 and start gorilla identification, too.
Thanks to all who voted, nominated, classified, and tagged videos at Chimp&See! We hope to see you around furthermore this year. Please come over and discover the secret life of chimpanzees (and gorillas, and leopards, and all the other critters).
Thanks again for your nominations for our Best of 2020! I had lots of fun watching and preparing the videos for the final poll of the Best-of videos! Now it’s time to vote for the Very Best of the Best!
Please choose your favorite video in each of the five categories and submit the choices. The videos are uploaded to youtube and can be watched directly in the survey document or on our youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/ChimpandSee/
The poll ends on January 20th (next Wednesday) and we will post the results – the winner and a runner’s up for each category here and on our blog afterwards.
Thanks for having you here and helping enthusiastically with our project,
