Generation times in wild chimpanzees and gorillas suggest earlier divergence times in great ape and human evolution

Langergraber, Kevin E.; Prüfer, Kay; Rowney, Carolyn; Boesch, Christophe; Crockford, Catherine; Fawcett, Katie A.; Inoue, Eiji; Inoue-Muruyama, Miho; Mitani, John C.; Muller, Martin N.; Robbins, Martha M.; Schubert, Grit; Stoinski, Tara S.; Viola, Bence; Watts, David P.; Wittig, Roman M.; Wrangham, Richard W.; Zuberbühler, Klaus; Pääbo, Svante; Vigilant, Linda

doi:10.1073/pnas.1211740109

Cited by 495 publications

(359 citation statements)

References 56 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

334

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The Ngogo community is unusually large and over the course of the study varied between ∼140 and 206 members, including 24-44 males aged 13 y or older. Thirteen is the youngest age at conception by an Ngogo male (45) and when males begin to patrol regularly (31). In keeping with the large size of their group, Ngogo males are only slightly more closely related to males in their own group than to males in competing groups (46); thus kin selection is likely an insufficient explanation for patrolling.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Group augmentation, collective action, and territorial boundary patrols by male chimpanzees

Langergraber

Watts

Vigilant

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

101

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

How can collective action evolve when individuals benefit from cooperation regardless of whether they pay its participation costs? According to one influential perspective, collective action problems are common, especially when groups are large, but may be solved when individuals who have more to gain from the collective good or can produce it at low costs provide it to others as a byproduct. Several results from a 20-y study of one of the most striking examples of collective action in nonhuman animals, territorial boundary patrolling by male chimpanzees, are consistent with these ideas. Individuals were more likely to patrol when (i) they had more to gain because they had many offspring in the group; (ii) they incurred relatively low costs because of their high dominance rank and superior physical condition; and (iii) the group size was relatively small. However, several other findings were better explained by group augmentation theory, which proposes that individuals should bear the short-term costs of collective action even when they have little to gain immediately if such action leads to increases in group size and long-term increases in reproductive success. In support of this theory, (i) individual patrolling effort was higher and less variable than participation in intergroup aggression in other primate species; (ii) males often patrolled when they had no offspring or maternal relatives in the group; and (iii) the aggregate patrolling effort of the group did not decrease with group size. We propose that group augmentation theory deserves more consideration in research on collective action. chimpanzees | Pan troglodytes | collective action | cooperation | territoriality

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Group augmentation, collective action, and territorial boundary patrols by male chimpanzees

Langergraber

Watts

Vigilant

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

101

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Gorillas diverged from the lineage leading to humans and chimpanzees/bonobos at least 6 million years ago (Glazko and Nei 2003;Langergraber et al 2012), but since that time, the two groups have come into secondary contact throughout equatorial Africa. When living in sympatry, great ape species experience dietary convergence in addition to shared geography (Williamson et al 1990;Tutin and Fernandez 1993;Shannon et al 2006;Yamagiwa and Basabose 2006), but they do not mingle or interbreed, and their phylogenetic distinctiveness is maintained.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sympatric chimpanzees and gorillas harbor convergent gut microbial communities

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The gut microbial communities within great apes have been shown to reflect the phylogenetic history of their hosts, indicating codiversification between great apes and their gut microbiota over evolutionary timescales. But because the great apes examined to date represent geographically isolated populations whose diets derive from different sources, it is unclear whether this pattern of codiversification has resulted from a long history of coadaptation between microbes and hosts (heritable factors) or from the ecological and geographic separation among host species (environmental factors). To evaluate the relative influences of heritable and environmental factors on the evolution of the great ape gut microbiota, we assayed the gut communities of sympatric and allopatric populations of chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas residing throughout equatorial Africa. Comparisons of these populations revealed that the gut communities of different host species can always be distinguished from one another but that the gut communities of sympatric chimpanzees and gorillas have converged in terms of community composition, sharing on average 53% more bacterial phylotypes than the gut communities of allopatric hosts. Host environment, independent of host genetics and evolutionary history, shaped the distribution of bacterial phylotypes across the Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, and Actinobacteria, the four most common phyla of gut bacteria. Moreover, the specific patterns of phylotype sharing among hosts suggest that chimpanzees living in sympatry with gorillas have acquired bacteria from gorillas. These results indicate that geographic isolation between host species has promoted the evolutionary differentiation of great ape gut bacterial communities.[Supplemental material is available for this article.]The compositions of the gut microbial communities harbored by great apes reflect the phylogeny of their hosts in a manner suggesting that host species and their gut microbiota have codiversified over evolutionary timescales Degnan et al. 2012). This pattern of codiversification between hosts and their gut microbiota could stem from both heritable factors, such as host genetics and the vertical, generation-to-generation transmission of gut microbes (Vaishampayan et al. 2010), and environmental factors, such as host diet and geography (Ley et al. 2008a,b;Turnbaugh et al. 2008Turnbaugh et al. , 2009De Filippo et al. 2010;La Serre et al. 2010;Muegge et al. 2011;Claesson et al. 2012;Yatsunenko et al. 2012). However, because the great ape species sampled to date represent populations that are at once phylogenetically, ecologically, and geographically distinct, it has not been possible to separate the relative influences of heritable and environmental factors on the evolution of the great ape gut microbiota.One approach to parsing the effects of environmental factors on the gut microbiota from those of heritable factors is to compare sympatric (i.e., co-occurring) and allopatric (i.e., geographically separated) host populatio...

show abstract

“…Genetic comparisons once pegged the human-chimpanzee common ancestor as recent as 4 Mya, pruning these fossil limbs out of our family tree (8). As Langergraber et al report (6), a slower rate places the human-chimpanzee common ancestor at more than 7 Mya and possibly as early as 13 Mya, reopening the case for these and other fossils.…”

Section: Breathing Easiermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The histories of the present subspecies of chimpanzees may go back to nearly 1 Mya. As Langergraber et al show (6), the genetic differences between western and eastern gorillas may be 1. (12,13) demonstrate the complexity of human population history.…”

Section: Beyond Branchesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In PNAS, Langergraber et al (6) seal one of the remaining holes in this emerging understanding by providing the most accurate estimates of generation length yet possible for wild chimpanzees and gorillas. They determined the parentage of chimpanzees and gorillas in wild study populations, which, in concert with field data on births, allows an accurate measure of the mean generation length.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation