Erin Wessling

Harvard University | Harvard · Department of Human Evolutionary Biology

Characteristics of food availability and distribution are key components of a species' ecology. Objective ecological surveying used in animal behavior research does not consider aspects of selection by the consumer and therefore may produce imprecise measures of availability. We propose a method to integrate ecological sampling of an animal's envir...

Indirect wildlife population surveying largely depends upon counts of artifacts of behavior (e.g., nests or dung). Likelihood to encounter these artifacts is derived from both artifact production and decay, and variability in production behavior is considered to contribute minimally to inaccuracy in wildlife estimation. Here, we demonstrate how ign...

The 2020 global spatial targets for protected areas set by the Convention on Biological Diversity have almost been achieved, but management effectiveness remains deficient. Personnel shortages are widely cited as major contributing factors but have not previously been quantified. Using data from 176 countries and territories, we estimate a current...

Knowledge on the population history of endangered species is critical for conservation, but whole-genome data on chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) is geographically sparse. Here, we produced the first non-invasive geolocalized catalog of genomic diversity by capturing chromosome 21 from 828 non-invasive samples collected at 48 sampling sites across Afr...

Discussions of how animal culture can aid the conservation crisis are burgeoning. As scientists and conservationists working to protect endangered species, we call for reflection on how the culture concept may be applied in practice. Here, we discuss both the potential benefits and potential shortcomings of applying the animal culture concept, and...

Wildlife population monitoring depends on accurate counts of individual animals or artefacts of behavior (e.g., nests or dung), but also must account for potential biases in the likelihood to encounter these animals or artefacts. In indirect surveying, which depends largely upon artefacts of behavior, likelihood to encounter indirect signs of a spe...

Discussions of how animal culture can aid the conservation crisis are burgeoning. As scientists and conservationists working to protect endangered species, we call for reflection on how the culture concept may be applied in practice. Here, we discuss both the potential benefits and potential shortcomings of applying the animal culture concept and p...

Aim: Modelling African great ape distribution has until now focused on current or past conditions, while future scenarios remain scarcely explored. Using an ensemble forecasting approach, we predicted changes in taxon-specific distribution under future scenarios of climate, land use and human populations for (1) areas outside protected areas (PAs)...

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are the only great apes that inhabit hot, dry, and open savannas. We review the environmental pressures of savannas on chimpanzees, such as food and water scarcity, and the evidence for chimpanzees' behavioral responses to these landscapes. In our analysis, savannas were generally associated with low chimpanzee populat...

Paleoclimate reconstructions have enhanced our understanding of how past climates have shaped present-day biodiversity. We hypothesize that the geographic extent of Pleistocene forest refugia and suitable habitat fluctuated significantly in time during the late Quaternary for chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Using bioclimatic variables representing m...

Characteristics of food availability and distribution are a key component of a species ecology. Objective measurement of food resources, such as vegetation plot sampling, do not consider aspects of selection by the consumer and therefore may produce imprecise measures of availability. Further, in most animal ecology research, traditional ecological...

Glucocorticoids, such as cortisol, mediate homeostatic processes, allowing individuals to adjust to fluctuating environments. The regulation of circadian cortisol responses, a key homeostatic function, has been shown to be heritable. However, to understand better the role of parental care in shaping physiological functioning in long-lived mammals w...

Nonstaple food is a food resource which sole consumption does not allow the maintenance of regular physiological functions, thus constituting a minor portion of an individual's diet. Many primates consume nonstaple food such as meat, insects, and fungi. Hypotheses on the dietary importance of nonstaple food include its role as fallback food and as...

Understanding variation in host-associated microbial communities is important given the relevance of microbiomes to host physiology and health. Using 560 fecal samples collected from wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) across their range, we assessed how geography, genetics, climate, vegetation, and diet relate to gut microbial community structure (...

Viruses closely related to human pathogens can reveal the origins of human infectious diseases. Human herpes simplexvirus type 1 (HSV-1) and type 2 (HSV-2) are hypothesized to have arisen via host-virus co-divergence and cross-species transmission. We report the discovery of novel herpes simplexviruses during a large-scale screening of fecal sample...

Stable isotope analysis is an increasingly used molecular tool to reconstruct the diet and ecology of elusive primates such as unhabituated chimpanzees. The consumption of C 4 plant feeding termites by chimpanzees may partly explain the relatively high carbon isotope values reported for some chimpanzee communities. However, the modest availability...

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21010-z.

When the benefits of interacting with out-group members exceed the associated costs, social groups may be expected to be tolerant towards each other. However, in many species exhibiting intergroup tolerance, the nature of benefits gained from intergroup encounters remains unclear. We investigated the potential costs and benefits associated with int...

Identifying ecological gradients at the range edge of a species is an essential step in revealing the underlying mechanisms and constraints that limit the species' geographic range. We aimed to describe the patterns of variation in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) density and habitat characteristics perpendicular to the northern edge of their ran...

Despite the large body of literature on ape conservation, much of the data needed for evidence‐based conservation decision‐making is still not readily accessible and standardized, rendering cross‐site comparison difficult. To support knowledge synthesis and to complement the IUCN SSC Ape Populations, Environments and Surveys database, we created th...

Many non-human primate species in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with Treponema pallidum subsp. pertenue, the bacterium causing yaws in humans. In humans, yaws is often characterized by lesions of the extremities and face, while T. pal-lidum subsp. pallidum causes venereal syphilis and is typically characterized by primary lesions on the genital,...

Large brains and behavioural innovation are positively correlated, species-specific traits, associated with the behavioural flexibility animals need for adapting to seasonal and unpredictable habitats. Similar ecological challenges would have been important drivers throughout human evolution. However, studies examining the influence of environmenta...

Human ethnographic knowledge covers hundreds of societies, whereas chimpanzee ethnography encompasses at most 15 communities. Using termite fishing as a window into the richness of chimpanzee cultural diversity, we address a potential sampling bias with 39 additional communities across Africa. Previously, termite fishing was known from eight locati...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Identifying ecological gradients at the range edge of a species is an essential step for revealing the underlying mechanisms and constraints that limit the species' geographic range. Here, we aimed to describe the patterns of variation in chimpanzee density and habitat characteristics perpendicular to the northern range edge and to investigate pote...

Aim Modelling African great ape distribution has until now focused on current or past conditions, whilst future scenarios remain scarcely explored. Using an ensemble forecasting approach, we predicted changes in taxon-specific distribution under future scenarios of climate, land-use and human population changes. Location Sub-Saharan Africa Method...

In 2016, IUCN uplisted the western chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes verus, from “Endangered” to “Critically Endangered” (Humle et al. 2016a), reflecting the subspecies’ increasingly dire conservation status. It occurs in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Senegal and Sierra Leone, but has been extirpated in three countries – Ben...

Aim Paleoclimate reconstructions have enhanced our understanding of how past climates may have shaped present-day biodiversity. We hypothesize that habitat stability in historical Afrotropical refugia played a major role in the habitat suitability and persistence of chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) during the late Quaternary. We aimed to build a dyn...

Background: Increasing evidence suggests many non-human primate (NHP) species in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with Treponema pallidum subsp. pertenue (TPE), the bacterium causing yaws in humans. In humans, yaws is characterized by lesions of the extremities and face, while Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum (TPA) causes venereal syphilis and is...

Herpesviruses are thought to have evolved in very close association with their hosts. This is notably the case for cytomegaloviruses (CMVs; genus Cytomegalovirus) infecting primates, which exhibit a strong signal of co-divergence with their hosts. Some herpesviruses are however known to have crossed species barriers. Based on a limited sampling of...

Even though information on global biodiversity trends becomes increasingly available, large taxonomic and spatial data gaps persist at the scale relevant to planning conservation interventions. This is because data collectors are hesitant to share data with global repositories due to workload, lack of incentives, and perceived risk of losing intell...

More than just numbers We often frame negative human impacts on animal species in terms of numbers of individuals reduced or numbers of regions from which species are absent. However, human activities are likely affecting species in more complex ways than these figures can capture. Kühl et al. studied behavioral and cultural diversity in our closes...

With continued expansion of anthropogenically modified landscapes, the proximity between humans and wildlife is continuing to increase, frequently resulting in species decline. Occasionally however, species are able to persist and there is an increased interest in understanding such positive outliers and underlying mechanisms. Eventually, such insi...

Objectives Food scarcity is proposed to be a limitation to chimpanzees at the limits of their range; however, such a constraint has never been investigated in this context. We investigated patterns of δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N variation along a latitudinal gradient at the northwestern West African chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) range limit with the expecta...

Objectives We investigated occurrences and patterns of terrestrial nocturnal activity in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and modelled the influence of various ecological predictors on nocturnal activity. Methods Data were extracted from terrestrial camera‐trap footage and ecological surveys from 22 chimpanzee study sites participating in the Pa...

Savanna-mosaic habitats are thought to represent exceptional circumstances for chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and owing to the virtues of their habitat as well as peripheral biogeographic location, they are often regarded as marginal to the chimpanzee ecological niche. If these habitats are marginal, then we should expect that chimpanzees living in...

While West African chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) were elevated to Critically Endan- gered status by the IUCN in 2016 as a result of significant population declines in recent decades, little is known about the population in Senegal. We surveyed the West African chimpanzees outside protected areas in the Kedougou region of southeastern Senegal...

Adaptations associated with shifting from a predominately forested habitat to a more open environment are considered a crucial step in hominin evolution. Understanding how chimpanzees, one of our closest-living relatives, are exposed to the selection pressures associated with living in a relatively sparse, hot, and dry environment can inform us abo...

African large mammals are under extreme pressure from unsustainable hunting and habitat loss. Certain traits make large mammals particularly vulnerable. These include late age at first reproduction, long inter-birth intervals, and low population density. Great apes are a prime example of such vulnerability, exhibiting all of these traits. Here we a...

Lethal coalitionary aggression is of significant interest to primatologists and anthropologists given its pervasiveness in human, but not nonhuman, animal societies. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) provide the largest sample of recorded lethal coalitionary aggression in nonhuman primates, and most long-term chimpanzee study sites have recorded coalit...

The isotope ecology of great apes is a useful reference for palaeodietary reconstructions in fossil hominins. As extant apes live in C3-dominated habitats, variation in isotope signatures is assumed to be low compared to hominoids exploiting C4-plant resources. However, isotopic differences between sites and between and within individuals are poorl...

For anthropologists, meat eating by primates like chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) warrants examination given the emphasis on hunting in human evolutionary history. As referential models, apes provide insight into the evolution of hominin hunting, given their phylogenetic relatedness and challenges reconstructing extinct hominin behaviour from palaeoa...