Despite intensive study in humans, responses to dying and death have been a neglected area of research in other social mammals, including nonhuman primates. Two recent reports [Anderson JR, Gillies A, Lock LC. 2010. Pan thanatology. Current Biology 20:R349-R351; Biro D, Humle T, Koops K, Souse C, Hayashi M, Matsuzawa T. 2010. Chimpanzee mothers at Bossou, Guinea carry the mummified remains of their dead infants. Current Biology 20:R351-R352] offered exciting new insights into behavior toward dying and dead conspecifics in our closest living relatives-chimpanzees. Here, we provide a comparative perspective on primate thanatology using observations from a more distant human relative-gelada monkeys (Theropithecus gelada)-and discuss how gelada reactions to dead and dying groupmates differ from those recently reported for chimpanzees. Over a 3.75-year study period, we observed 14 female geladas at Guassa, Ethiopia carrying dead infants from 1 hr to ≥48 days after death. Dead infants were carried by their mothers, other females in their group, and even by females belonging to other groups. Like other primate populations in which extended (>10 days) infant carrying after death has been reported, geladas at Guassa experience an extreme climate for primates, creating conditions which may favor slower rates of decomposition of dead individuals. We also witnessed the events leading up to the deaths of two individuals and the responses by groupmates to these dying individuals. Our results suggest that while chimpanzee mothers are not unique among primates in carrying their dead infants for long periods, seemingly "compassionate" caretaking behavior toward dying groupmates may be unique to chimpanzees among nonhuman primates (though it remains unknown whether such "compassionate" behavior occurs outside captivity).

Mobility is a key component of species' biology. Research on mobility is inherently difficult, however, resulting in studies of narrow taxonomic, spatial, and temporal scope with results that are difficult to compare between studies. We had three goals for our research: (1) construct a data set of mobility estimates for the butterfly species of Canada based on naturalists' knowledge; (2) develop methods to evaluate aspects of accuracy and precision for knowledge-based ecological research such as ours; and (3) using our data set, test mobility-related hypotheses of species-level relationships. We distributed a questionnaire to amateur and professional lepidopterists in Canada and northern USA, asking them to estimate the mobility of Canadian butterfly species based on their field experience. Based on responses from 51 lepidopterists with approximately 800 years of combined field experience, we received mobility estimates for almost all (291 out of 307) of Canada's butterfly taxa. Mobility estimates were consistent among respondents and were not affected by respondent expertise. Mobility carries a strong phylogenetic signal and is positively related to wingspan (albeit weakly), range size, and host plant breadth, and negatively related to conservation risk. Reliance upon naturalists' experience was essential to the feasibility of our project, and provides a promising method for many types of ecological research.

Animals and fruiting plants are involved in a complex set of interactions, with animals relying on fruiting trees as food resources, and fruiting trees relying on animals for seed dispersal. This interdependence shapes fruit signals such as colour and odour, to increase fruit detectability, and animal sensory systems, such as colour vision and olfaction to facilitate food identification and selection. Despite the ecological and evolutionary importance of plant-animal interactions for shaping animal sensory adaptations and plant characteristics, the details of the relationship are poorly understood. Here we examine the role of fruit chromaticity, luminance and odour on seed dispersal by mouse lemurs. We show that both fruit colour and odour significantly predict fruit consumption and seed dispersal by Microcebus ravelobensis and M. murinus. Our study is the first to quantify and examine the role of bimodal fruit signals on seed dispersal in light of the sensory abilities of the disperser.

Parasitism is expected to impact host morbidity or mortality, although the fitness costs of parasitism have rarely been quantified for wildlife hosts. Tapeworms in the genus Taenia exploit a variety of vertebrates, including livestock, humans, and geladas (Theropithecus gelada), monkeys endemic to the alpine grasslands of Ethiopia. Despite Taenia's adverse societal and economic impacts, we know little about the prevalence of disease associated with Taenia infection in wildlife or the impacts of this disease on host health, mortality and reproduction. We monitored geladas at Guassa, Ethiopia over a continuous 6½ year period for external evidence (cysts or coenuri) of Taenia-associated disease (coenurosis) and evaluated the impact of coenurosis on host survival and reproduction. We also identified (through genetic and histological analyses) the tapeworms causing coenurosis in wild geladas at Guassa as Taenia serialis. Nearly 1/3 of adult geladas at Guassa possessed ≥1 coenurus at some point in the study. Coenurosis adversely impacted gelada survival and reproduction at Guassa and this impact spanned two generations: adults with coenuri suffered higher mortality than members of their sex without coenuri and offspring of females with coenuri also suffered higher mortality. Coenurosis also negatively affected adult reproduction, lengthening interbirth intervals and reducing the likelihood that males successfully assumed reproductive control over units of females. Our study provides the first empirical evidence that coenurosis increases mortality and reduces fertility in wild nonhuman primate hosts. Our research highlights the value of longitudinal monitoring of individually recognized animals in natural populations for advancing knowledge of parasite-host evolutionary dynamics and offering clues to the etiology and control of infectious disease.

The large-bodied, terrestrial primates in the tribe Papionini are among the most intensely studied animals in the world, yet for some members of this tribe we know comparatively little about their evolutionary history and phylogeography. Geladas (Theropithecus gelada Rüppell, 1835), endemic primates of the Ethiopian highlands, are largely unstudied both in genetic diversity and intrageneric phylogeny. Currently, a northern and central subspecies and one isolated southern population are recognized, of which the central is classified as Least Concern, the northern as Vulnerable, and the southern is not yet assessed. The distribution and taxonomy of the subspecies remain poorly defined. Here, we estimate the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) diversity and phylogenetic relationships among gelada mtDNA lineages based on samples across the entire species range. We analysed 1.7 kb-long sequences of the mtDNA genome, spanning the cytochrome b gene and the hypervariable region I of the D-loop, derived from 162 faecal samples. We detected five major haplogroups or clades (south, central-1, central-2, north-1, north-2) which diverged between 0.67 and 0.43 million years ago, thus suggesting a rapid radiation, resulting in largely unresolved intrageneric phylogenetic relationships. Both, the northern and central demes contain two similarly valid haplogroups, each with little or no geographic segregation among respective haplogroups. Effective population sizes of the northern and central demes decreased during and after the last glacial maximum but remained stable for the southern deme, although on a very low level. The distribution of haplogroups within the geographic ranges of the putative gelada subspecies indicates that mtDNA sequence information does not allow reliable taxonomic inferences and thus is not sufficient for solving the taxonomic rank of the three demic populations, with the possible exception of the southern population. Nevertheless, due to the genetic differences all three populations deserve conservation efforts, in particular the smallest southern population.