Amanda D Melin

University of Calgary · Department of Anthropology and Archaeology

Significance Color vision variation is prevalent among neotropical monkeys. Captive studies indicate that trichromacy should confer a fruit feeding advantage. This hypothesis, however, has yet to be supported by field studies. We collected behavioral and genetic data from 72 capuchins and analyzed ca. 20,000 fruit intake events across 27 plant spec...

Debate on the adaptive origins of primates has long focused on the functional ecology of the primate visual system. For example, it is hypothesized that variable expression of short- (SWS1) and middle-to-long-wavelength sensitive (M/LWS) opsins, which confer color vision, can be used to infer ancestral activity patterns and therefore selective ecol...

Primates possess remarkably variable color vision, and the ecological and social factors shaping this variation remain heavily debated. Here, we test whether central tenants of the folivory hypothesis of routine trichromacy hold for the foraging ecology of howler monkeys. Howler monkeys (genus Alouatta) and paleotropical primates (Parvorder: Catarr...

The century-old idea that stripes make zebras cryptic to large carnivores has never been examined systematically. We evaluated this hypothesis by passing digital images of zebras through species-specific spatial and colour filters to simulate their appearance for the visual systems of zebras’ primary predators and zebras themselves. We also measure...

The parallel evolution of increased sensorimotor intelligence in humans and capuchins has been linked to the cognitive and manual demands of seasonal extractive faunivory. This hypothesis is attractive on theoretical grounds, but it has eluded widespread acceptance due to lack of empirical data. For instance, the effects of seasonality on the extra...

The processes governing the infection and transmission patterns of gastrointestinal parasites in animal populations are dynamic, multi-faceted, and complex. Efforts to better understand how these processes operate in natural systems contribute to our understanding of host–parasite interactions, and aid in our efforts to mitigate the costs of infect...

Studying the fecal microbiota of wild baboons helps provide new insight into the factors that influence biological aging.

The caribou (Rangifer tarandus sspp.) is a keystone wildlife species in northern ecosystems that plays a central role in the culture, spirituality and food security of Indigenous People. The Arctic is currently experiencing an unprecedented rate of climate change, including warming temperatures and altered patterns of precipitation. These environme...

Studying biological ageing in animal models can circumvent some of the confounds exhibited by studies of human ageing. Ageing research in non-human primates has provided invaluable insights into human lifespan and healthspan. Yet data on patterns of ageing from wild primates remain relatively scarce, centred around a few populations of catarrhine s...

The origin of primates has long been associated with an increased emphasis on manual grasping and touch. Precision touch, facilitated by specialized mechanoreceptors in glabrous skin, provides critical sensory feedback for grasping‐related tasks and perception of ecologically‐relevant stimuli. Despite its importance, studies of mechanoreceptors in...

Sensory systems mediate our social interactions, food intake, livelihoods, and other essential daily functions. Age-related decline and disease in sensory systems pose a significant challenge to healthy aging. Research on sensory decline in humans is informative but can often be difficult, subject to sampling bias, and influenced by environmental v...

Characterizing DNA methylation patterns is important for addressing key questions in evolutionary biology, geroscience, and medical genomics. While costs are decreasing, whole-genome DNA methylation profiling remains prohibitively expensive for most population-scale studies, creating a need for cost-effective, reduced representation approaches (i.e...

The genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are vital to vertebrate immunity and may influence mate choice in several species. The extent to which the MHC influences female mate choice in primates remains poorly understood, and studies of MHC-based mate choice in platyrrhines are especially rare. White-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus imit...

The sense of smell is an important mediator of health and sociality at all stages of life, yet it has received limited attention in our lineage. Olfaction starts in utero and participates in the establishment of social bonds in children, and of romantic and sexual relationships after puberty. Smell further plays a key role in food assessment and da...

Bitter taste perception is important in preventing animals from ingesting potentially toxic compounds. Whole-genome assembly (WGA) data have revealed that bitter taste receptor genes ( TAS2R s) comprise a multigene family with dozens of intact and disrupted genes in primates. However, publicly available WGA data are often incomplete, especially for...

The copromicroscopic identification of gastrointestinal parasites is a common, cost-effective method vital to understanding host-parasite interactions. However, its efficacy depends on effective preservation of the samples. In this study, we compare the preservation of ethanol and formalin preserved gastrointestinal parasites collected from a wild...

Noncoding DNA is central to our understanding of human gene regulation and complex diseases1,2, and measuring the evolutionary sequence constraint can establish the functional relevance of putative regulatory elements in the human genome3–9. Identifying the genomic elements that have become constrained specifically in primates has been hampered by...

Groups of animals inhabit vastly different sensory worlds, or umwelten, which shape fundamental aspects of their behaviour. Yet the sensory ecology of species is rarely incorporated into the emerging field of collective behaviour, which studies the movements, population-level behaviours, and emergent properties of animal groups. Here, we review the...

Understanding diet selectivity is a longstanding goal in primate ecology. Deciphering when and why primates consume different resources can provide insights into their nutritional ecology as well as adaptations to food scarcity. Plant pith, the spongy interior of plant stems, is occasionally eaten by primates, but the context is poorly understood....

Color signals play an important role in intraspecific communication and are well studied in catarrhine primates, which exhibit uniform trichromatic vision that is well suited to detecting such signals. Platyrrhine primates exhibit polymorphic color vision with different individuals possessing different color vision types in most species. Intriguing...

Dietary variation within and across species drives the eco-evolutionary responsiveness of genes necessary to metabolize nutrients and other components. Recent evidence from humans and other mammals suggests that sugar-rich diets of floral nectar and ripe fruit have favoured mutations in, and functional preservation of, the ADH7 gene, which encodes...

Chemosensation (olfaction, taste) is essential for detecting and assessing foods, such that dietary shifts elicit evolutionary changes in vertebrate chemosensory genes. The transition from hunting and gathering to agriculture dramatically altered how humans acquire food. Recent genetic and linguistic studies suggest agriculture may have precipitate...

Introduction: Safe handling of biological samples sourced from wild ecosystems is a pressing concern for scientists in disparate fields, including ecology and evolution, OneHealth initiatives, bioresources, geography, veterinary medicine, conservation, and many others. This is especially relevant given the growing global research community and coll...

Personalized genome sequencing has revealed millions of genetic differences between individuals, but our understanding of their clinical relevance remains largely incomplete. To systematically decipher the effects of human genetic variants, we obtained whole-genome sequencing data for 809 individuals from 233 primate species and identified 4.3 mill...

Purpose: Rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) are the premier nonhuman primate model for studying human health and disease. We investigated if age was associated with clinically relevant ocular features in a large cohort of free-ranging rhesus macaques from Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico. Methods: We evaluated 120 rhesus macaques (73 males, 47 females)...

The rich diversity of morphology and behavior displayed across primate species provides an informative context in which to study the impact of genomic diversity on fundamental biological processes. Analysis of that diversity provides insight into long-standing questions in evolutionary and conservation biology and is urgent given severe threats the...

Personalized genome sequencing has revealed millions of genetic differences between individuals, but our understanding of their clinical relevance remains largely incomplete. To systematically decipher the effects of human genetic variants, we obtained whole genome sequencing data for 809 individuals from 233 primate species, and identified 4.3 mil...

The rich diversity of morphology and behavior displayed across primate species provides an informative context in which to study the impact of genomic diversity on fundamental biological processes. Analysis of that diversity provides insight into long-standing questions in evolutionary and conservation biology, and is urgent given severe threats th...

In human-modified tropical landscapes, the survival of arboreal vertebrates, particularly primates, depends on their plant dietary diversity. Here, we assess the diversity of plants included in the diet of Costa Rican non-human primates, CR-NHP (i.e., Alouatta palliata palliata, Ateles geoffroyi, Cebus imitator, and Saimiri oerstedii) inhabiting di...

In human-modified tropical landscapes, the survival of arboreal vertebrates, particularly primates, depends on their plant dietary diversity. Here, we assessed diversity in the vegetative diets of Costa Rican non-human primates (i.e. Alouatta palliata palliata, Ateles geoffroyi, Cebus imitator, and Saimiri oerstedii) inhabiting a range of habitat t...

Animals deposit odorant signals during social interactions, and to mark territories and resources. Odorants may be direct by-products of essential biochemical pathways, derived from diet and the environment, and/or produced by commensal bacteria. Accordingly, animals in captivity, which are provisioned with artificial diets and environments, may pr...

Twenty years ago, Dominy and colleagues published "The sensory ecology of primate food perception," an impactful review that brought new perspectives to understanding primate foraging adaptations. Their review synthesized information on primate senses and explored how senses informed feeding behavior. Research on primate sensory ecology has seen ex...

Coevolution between signalers and receivers has played a significant role in the diversity of animal signals and sensory systems. Platyrrhines (monkeys in the Americas) exhibit a remarkable color vision polymorphism that may have been selected by both natural and sexual selection, but sociosexual color signaling among platyrrhines has received almo...

Aging is accompanied by a host of social and biological changes that correlate with behavior, cognitive health and susceptibility to neurodegenerative disease. To understand trajectories of brain aging in a primate, we generated a multiregion bulk (N = 527 samples) and single-nucleus (N = 24 samples) brain transcriptional dataset encompassing 15 br...

Among mammals, the order Primates is exceptional in having a high taxonomic richness in which the taxa are arboreal, semiterrestrial, or terrestrial. Although habitual terrestriality is pervasive among the apes and African and Asian monkeys (catarrhines), it is largely absent among monkeys of the Americas (platyrrhines), as well as galagos, lemurs,...

Senses form the interface between animals and environments, and provide a window into the ecology of past and present species. However, research on sensory behaviours by wild frugivores is sparse. Here, we examine fruit assessment by three sympatric primates ( Alouatta palliata , Ateles geoffroyi and Cebus imitator ) to test the hypothesis that die...

Purpose Rhesus macaques ( Macaca mulatta ) are the premier nonhuman primate model for studying human health and disease. We aimed to investigate if age was associated with ocular features of clinical relevance in a large cohort of free-ranging rhesus macaques from Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico. Methods We evaluated 120 rhesus macaques (73 males, 47 f...

A defining feature of catarrhine primates is uniform trichromacy – the ability to distinguish red (long; L), green (medium; M), and blue (short; S) wavelengths of light. While the tuning of photoreceptors is conserved, the ratio of L:M cones in the retina is variable within and between species, with human cone ratios differing from other catarrhine...

Primates have adapted to numerous environments and lifestyles but very few species are native to high elevations. Here we investigated high-altitude adaptations in the gelada (Theropithecus gelada), a monkey endemic to the Ethiopian Plateau. We examined genome-wide variation in conjunction with measurements of haematological and morphological trait...

Mitochondrial DNA remains a cornerstone for molecular ecology, especially for study species from which high‐quality tissue samples cannot be easily obtained. Methods using mitochondrial markers are usually reliant on reference databases, but these are often incomplete. Furthermore, available mitochondrial genomes often lack crucial metadata, such a...

Aeroscapes—dynamic patterns of air speed and direction—form a critical component of landscape ecology by shaping numerous animal behaviors, including movement, foraging, and social and/or reproductive interactions. Aeroecology is particularly critical for sensory ecology: air is the medium through which many sensory signals and cues propagate, inhe...

Capuchins are platyrrhines (monkeys found in the Americas) within the Cebidae family. For most of their taxonomic history, the two main morphological types of capuchins, gracile (untufted) and robust (tufted), were assigned to a single genus, Cebus. Further, all tufted capuchins were assigned to a single species, Cebus apella, despite broad geograp...

The olfactory receptor (OR) gene family is comprised of hundreds of intact and disrupted genes in humans. The compositions and copy number variation (CNV) of disrupted and intact OR genes among individuals is expected to cause variation in olfactory perception. However, little is known about OR genetic variation in many human populations. In this s...

In most of our lifetimes, we have not faced a global pandemic such as the novel coronavirus disease 2019. The world has changed as a result. However, it is not only humans who are affected by a pandemic of this scale. Our closest relatives, the non-human primates (NHPs) who encounter researchers, sanctuary/zoo employees, and tourists, are also pote...

OR gene family is comprised of hundreds of intact and disrupted genes. Compositional difference of intact/disrupted genes among individuals causes olfactory variation. We examined genetic variation of 554 OR genes and 85 neutral regions in 69 Japanese individuals. These sequences were enriched by targeted capture and were subjected to massive paral...

Understanding variation in social grouping patterns among animal taxa is an enduring goal of ethologists, who seek to evaluate the selective pressures shaping the evolution of sociality. Cohesive association with conspecifics increases intragroup feeding competition and may impose constraints on group size. Furthermore, in sexually dimorphic specie...

For female mammals, communicating the timing of ovulation is essential for reproduction. Olfactory communication via volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can play a key role. We investigated urinary VOCs across the oestrous cycle using laboratory mice. We assessed the oestrous stage through daily vaginal cytology and analysed urinary VOCs using headsp...

Survival at high altitude requires adapting to extreme conditions such as environmental hypoxia. To understand high-altitude adaptations in a primate, we assembled the genome of the gelada (Theropithecus gelada), an endemic Ethiopian monkey, and complemented it with population resequencing, hematological, and morphometric data. Unexpectedly, we ide...

Taste perception plays an essential role in food selection. Umami (savory) tastes are sensed by a taste receptor complex, T1R1/T1R3, that detects proteinogenic amino acids.1 High sensitivity to l-glutamate (l-Glu) is a characteristic of human T1R1/T1R3, but the T1R1/T1R3 of other vertebrates does not consistently show this l-Glu response.1,2 Here,...

The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is an important gene complex contributing to adaptive immunity. Studies of platyrrhine MHC have focused on identifying experimental models of immune system function in the equivalent Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA). These genes have thus been explored primarily in captive platyrrhine individuals from researc...

Energy demands associated with pregnancy and lactation are significant forces in mammalian evolution. To mitigate increased energy costs associated with reproduction, female mammals have evolved behavioral and physiological responses. Some species alter activity to conserve energy during pregnancy and lactation, while others experience changes in m...

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which in humans leads to the disease COVID-19, has caused global disruption and more than 2 million fatalities since it first emerged in late 2019. As we write, infection rates are at their highest point globally and are rising extremely rapidly in some areas due to more infectious variants. The primary target of S...

Background An individual’s microbiome changes over the course of its lifetime, especially during infancy, and again in old age. Confounding factors such as diet and healthcare make it difficult to disentangle the interactions between age, health, and microbial changes in humans. Animal models present an excellent opportunity to study age- and sex-l...

The polymorphic color vision system present in most North, Central, and South American monkeys is a textbook case of balancing selection, yet the mechanism behind it remains poorly understood. Previous work has established task-specific foraging advantages to different color vision phenotypes: dichromats (red-green colorblind) are more efficient fo...

Objectives Although fermented food use is ubiquitous in humans, the ecological and evolutionary factors contributing to its emergence are unclear. Here we investigated the ecological contexts surrounding the consumption of fruits in the late stages of fermentation by wild primates to provide insight into its adaptive function. We hypothesized that...

Significance Surviving challenging environments, living long lives, and engaging in complex cognitive processes are hallmark human characteristics. Similar traits have evolved in parallel in capuchin monkeys, but their genetic underpinnings remain unexplored. We developed and annotated a reference assembly for white-faced capuchin monkeys to explor...

Chemosignals are mediators of social interactions in mammals, providing con‐ and hetero‐specifics with information on fixed (e.g., species, sex, group, and individual identity) and variable (e.g., social, reproductive, and health status) features of the signaler. Yet, methodological difficulties of recording and quantifying odor signals, especially...

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which in humans leads to the disease COVID-19, has caused global disruption and more than 1.5 million fatalities since it first emerged in late 2019. As we write, infection rates are currently at their highest point globally and are rising extremely rapidly in some areas due to more infectious variants. The primary...

Chemosignals are mediators of social interactions in mammals, providing con- and hetero-specifics with information on fixed (e.g. species, sex, group and individual identity) and variable (e.g. social, reproductive and health status) features of the signaler. Yet methodological difficulties of recording and quantifying odor signals, especially in f...

Research on non‐human primates in the endangered tropical dry forest of Sector Santa Rosa (SSR), Área de Conservación Guanacaste (ACG), was launched in 1983 and is now one of the longest running studies of primates globally. Such continuous study provides a rare opportunity to ask questions that are only answerable through decades‐long monitoring o...

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 has caused over a million human deaths and massive global disruption. The viral infection may also represent a threat to our closest living relatives, nonhuman primates. The contact surface of the host cell receptor, ACE2, displays amino acid residues that are critical for virus recognition, and variations at these criti...

Cannibalism has been observed in a variety of animal taxa; however, it is relatively uncommon in primates. Thus, we rely heavily on case reports of this behavior to advance our understanding of the contexts under which it occurs. Here, we report the first observation of cannibalism in a group of wild white‐faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus imitator). T...

Howler monkeys (platyrrhini) have evolved routine trichromatic color vision independently from catarrhines, which presents an opportunity to test hypotheses concerning the adaptive value of distinguishing reddish from greenish hues. A longstanding hypothesis posits that trichromacy aids in the efficient detection of reddish‐ripe fruits, which could...

The adaptive origins of primates and anthropoid primates are topics of enduring interest to biological anthropologists. A convention in these discussions is to treat the light environment as binary—night is dark, day is light—and to impute corresponding selective pressure on the visual systems and behaviors of primates. In consequence, debate has t...

With expanding anthropogenic disturbances to forests around the world, forest restoration is increasingly important for bird conservation. Restoration monitoring is critical for understanding how birds respond to forest regeneration and for assessing the effectiveness of restoration efforts. Using bioacoustic monitoring, we recorded bird communitie...