Nutrition, body condition, activity patterns, and parasitism of free‐ranging troops of olive baboons (Papio anubis) in Kenya

Abstract

Three troops of olive baboons (Papio anubis) comprising 134 animals were captured during a translocation program. All three troops (PHG, CRIP, WBY) lived in high-altitude savannah, but two (CRIP and WBY) also frequented human settlements, where they had access to the garbage pits and vegetable gardens. The translocation offered the opportunity to compare body condition, activity patterns, and parasitism among the troops of animals. A variety of body measurements were taken, a physical examination performed, activity patterns for the previous 2 years enumerated, and blood and feces collected for virological and parasitological analyses. Body condition, as judged qualitatively by appearance and quantitatively by subcutaneous fat thickness and body weight, was lowest in PHG, the naturally foraging troop. All animals were negative for all viruses. No blood-borne parasites were found, but the feces of the majority of animals were positive for eggs of strongyles, ascarids, Trichuris spp., and Strongyloides spp. Quantification of strongyles indicated the heaviest burdens were in the non provisioned troop PHG. These results when combined with the behavioral observations that PHG spent more time foraging and less time resting or socializing than WBY suggest lowered availability andlor a poorer quality of PHG's diet. The data support the hypothesis of a causal relationship between host nutrition and helminth parasite infection but do not permit general conclusions to be drawn on mechanisms of interaction.

Too much of a good thing: resource provisioning alters infectious disease dynamics in wildlife

“…Theoretical and empirical studies have demonstrated that provisioning can increase pathogen prevalence and outbreak intensity through increases in aggregation and population size [7,9], whereas others suggest provisioning improves nutrition and immune defence in ways that lower infection burdens [2,14,18]. We demonstrate through simple, mechanistic models rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org Biol.…”

“…Because our model highlighted the key role of resource-mediated immunity for determining disease outcomes, experimental manipulations are needed to determine how provisioning influences susceptibility and infectivity. Additionally, although host recovery was not a function of provisioning in our model (owing to stronger evidence for virulence-related effects of improved nutrition), field studies suggest provisioning may decrease prevalence through improved pathogen clearance [14,18]. Thus, laboratory food supplementation experiments quantifying immune defence could incorporate pathogen challenge to better elucidate this relationship [19].…”

Gastrointestinal parasite infection of the Gray mouse lemur (<i>Microcebus murinus</i>) in the littoral forest of Mandena, Madagascar: Effects of forest fragmentation and degradation

“…Studies on gastrointestinal parasites of primates have focussed on haplorhine primates (Appleton et al 1986, Eley et al 1989, McGrew et al 1989, Stoner 1996, Stuart et al 1990, 1998, Müller-Graf et al 1997, Ashford et al 1990, Lilly et al 2002, Hahn et al 2003, Gillespie et al 2004, Chapman and Huffman 2009. Prosimians' gastrointestinal parasites are less well studied.…”

Noninvasive Assessment of Gastrointestinal Parasite Infections in Free-Ranging Primates

“…Though many studies have documented the gastrointestinal parasites of wild populations of African apes (Ashford et al, 1990(Ashford et al, , 2000Lilly et al, 2002;McGrew et al, 1989), baboons (Appleton et al, 1986;Eley et al, 1989;Hahn et al, 2003;Müller-Graf et al, 1997), and howlers (Stoner, 1996;Stuart et al, 1990Stuart et al, , 1998, the gastrointestinal parasites of other primate taxa remain poorly known (cf. Gillespie et al, 2004Gillespie et al, , 2005aStuart et al, 1993).…”