
Iulia BădescuUniversité de Montréal | UdeM · Department of Anthropology
Iulia Bădescu
PhD
About
21
Publications
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Introduction
I study infant care, development, and maternal investment in wild primates.
Additional affiliations
June 2017 - present
September 2011 - May 2017
May 2009 - June 2011
Publications
Publications (21)
Objectives:
Determining nutritional development in wild primates is difficult through observations because confirming dietary intake is challenging. Physiological measures are needed to determine the relative contributions of maternal milk and other foods at different ages, and time of weaning. We used fecal stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes (δ(...
The rate at which infants develop can vary within species. This variation may be due to differences between infants in their nutritional intake and physiology, or the ability of females to adjust the amount and timing of maternal investment to maximize their lifetime reproductive success. This is the first primate study that uses a large sample siz...
Primate females often inspect, touch and groom others' infants (natal attraction) and they may hold and carry these infants in a manner resembling maternal care (infant handling). While natal attraction and infant handling occur in most wild colobines, little is known about the factors influencing the expression of these behaviors. We examined the...
Same-sex sexual behaviour (SSSB) occurs in most animal clades, but published reports are largely concentrated in a few taxa. Thus, there remains a paucity of published reports for most mammalian species. We conducted a cross-sectional expert survey to better understand the underlying reasons for the lack of publications on this topic. Most responde...
On June 16, 2023, a juvenile female olive baboon (Papio anubis) in our study troop at the Uaso Ngiro Baboon Project in Kenya grabbed a ~3-week-old infant from another troop and released him near a high-ranking adult female in the study troop. This female, who was already pregnant, took the infant and treated him as her own, allowing him nipple acce...
Measuring the relative contributions of milk and non‐milk foods in the diets of primate infants is difficult from observations. Stable carbon (δ ¹³ C) and nitrogen (δ ¹⁵ N) isotopes in hair can be used to physiologically track infant feeding through development, but few wild studies have done so, likely due to the difficulty in collecting hair non‐...
The interaction between infant feeding and maternal lactational physiology influences female inter-birth intervals and mediates maternal reproductive trade-offs. We investigated variation in feeding development in 72 immature wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) at Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda, and made inferences about maternal...
Maternal lactational investment can affect female reproductive rates and offspring survival in mammals and can be biased towards infants of one sex. We compared estimates of lactation effort among mothers, assessed as their potential milk contribution to age-specific infant diets (mother-infant differences in fecal stable nitrogen isotopes, δ ¹⁵ N)...
• A large body of research shows that maternal stress during an offspring’s early life can impact its phenotype in both the short and long term. In the Vertebrata, most research has been focused on maternal stress during the prenatal period. However, the postnatal period is particularly important in mammals because maternal milk provides a conduit...
Infant handling (holding or carrying) by adult males is rare in mammals; however, high levels have been reported in some primates. Though infant handling is a costly behaviour, there are many benefits that male handlers can accrue. Infant handling by males is most conspicuous in platyrrhines and tends to be uncommon in catarrhines. In the latter sp...
Premasticated food transfer, when an individual partially breaks down food through chewing and feeds it to another individual, usually mouth-to-mouth, is described widely across human cultures. This behavior plays an important role in modern humans’ strategy of complementary feeding, which involves supplementing maternal milk in infant diets with p...
Introduction to alloparental care in the animal kingdom with emphasis on non-human primates, birds, and fishes
The Pârgavului Cave is located in the Vâlcan Mountains (South Carpathians) and develops in Lower and Middle Jurassic limestones. Due to various carbonate facies, the dissolution acted selectively; thus, cave passages show different morphologies. The Mesozoic tectonics events combined with the hydrogeological conditions existing during the Quaternar...
Alloparenting, when individuals other than the mother assist with infant care, can vary between and within populations and has potential fitness costs and benefits for individuals involved. We investigated the effects of alloparenting on the speed with which infants were weaned, a potential component of maternal fitness because of how it can affect...
Male takeovers affect male tenure, female mate choice and ultimately, individual reproductive success in group-living primates. In social systems with female philopatry and high male reproductive skew, male takeovers largely determine female mate choice, whereas in species with female dispersal, females have the option of deserting a new male. We f...
Females that do not experience strong contest competition for food are presumed to form ‘egalitarian’ relationships (i.e., lacking strong, linear dominance hierarchies). However, recent studies of Gorilla beringei beringei (mountain gorilla) have documented relatively strong, linear female dominance hierarchies despite them having a highly folivoro...
The threat of infanticide by males is suggested to determine upper group size limits for some folivores because large female aggregations attract immigrating males. When groups get large enough to become multimale, infanticide risk should decline because, all other things being equal, more males should deter outside takeovers and the counterstrateg...