Kimberley J Hockings

• PhD
• Lecturer at University of Exeter

Primate responses to anthropogenic habitat changes such as agriculture occur along a gradient ranging from local extinction where primates are unable to cope with the changing conditions (especially if hunted or persecuted), to apparent benefit where primates show flexible behaviours that enable them to exploit human-dominated landscapes successful...

Attacks on humans by wildlife are a leading cause of ‘human–wildlife conflict’ and are on the rise due to increasing human populations and competition over space and resources. Thus far, little attention has focused on attacks by wild great apes on humans compared to other large mammals. This chapter reviews the complexities of human–great ape inte...

Despite the spread of human-impacted wildlife habitats, few studies have examined how animals adapt their socioecology in agriculturaleforest ecotones. Anthropogenic processes such as agricultural development directly affect the ecological challenges that species face. In agriculturaleforest ecotones cultivated foods that are palatable, energy-rich...

The ability of wild animals to respond flexibly to anthropogenic environmental changes, including agriculture, is critical to survival in human-impacted habitats. Understanding use of human foods by wildlife can shed light on the acquisition of novel feeding habits and how animals respond to human-driven land-use changes. Little attention has focus...

We are in a new epoch, the Anthropocene, and research into our closest living relatives, the great apes, must keep pace with the rate that our species is driving change. While a goal of many studies is to understand how great apes behave in natural contexts, the impact of human activities must increasingly be taken into account. This is both a chal...

Wildlife conservation has traditionally focused on the maintenance of population size, genetic diversity or habitat protection, with successes measured by stability or growth of population estimates, decrease in rates of population decline, and reduction of threats. However, the importance of preserving animal cultures and behavioral diversity is g...

Wildlife conservation has traditionally focused on the maintenance of population size, genetic diversity or habitat protection, with successes measured by stability or growth of population estimates, decrease in rates of population decline, and reduction of threats. However, the importance of preserving animal cultures and behavioral diversity is g...

Shared landscapes in which humans and wildlife coexist, are increasingly recognized as integral to conservation. Fine‐scale data on the distribution and density of threatened wildlife are therefore critical to promote long‐term coexistence. Yet, the spatial complexity of habitat, anthropic threats and animal behaviour in shared landscapes challenge...

Habitat loss is one of the primary drivers of large felid decline. The leopard (Panthera pardus), a generalist large felid species, has the behavioural and dietary flexibility to exploit different habitat types of varying human influence. Understanding habitat selection in a shared landscape is critical for the development of conservation strategie...

Passive acoustic monitoring is a promising tool for monitoring at-risk populations of vocal species, yet, extracting relevant information from large acoustic datasets can be time-consuming, creating a bottleneck at the point of analysis. To address this, an open-source framework for deep learning in bioacoustics to automatically detect Bornean whit...

Passive acoustic monitoring is a promising tool for monitoring at-risk populations of vocal species, yet extracting relevant information from large acoustic datasets can be time- consuming, creating a bottleneck at the point of analysis. We adapted an open-source framework for deep learning in bioacoustics to automatically detect Bornean white-bear...

Conservation funding is currently limited; cost-effective conservation solutions are essential. We suggest that the thousands of field stations worldwide can play key roles at the frontline of biodiversity conservation and have high intrinsic value. We assessed field stations’ conservation return on investment and explored the impact of COVID-19. W...

Negative interactions between humans and venomous snakes are increasing, with the World Health Organization committed to halving snakebite deaths and disabilities by 2030. Evidence‐based strategies are thus urgently required to reduce snakebite events in high‐risk areas, while promoting snake conservation. Understanding the factors that drive the a...

Non-human great apes-chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, and orangutans-are threatened by agricultural expansion, particularly from rice, cacao, cassava, maize, and oil palm cultivation. Agriculture replaces and fragments great ape habitats, bringing them closer to humans and often resulting in conflict. Though the impact of agriculture on great apes i...

Studying fruit traits and their interactions with seed dispersers can improve how we interpret patterns of biodiversity, ecosystem function and evolution. Mounting evidence suggests that fruit ethanol is common and variable, and may exert selective pressures on seed dispersers. To test this, we comprehensively assess fruit ethanol content in a wild...

Non-human great apes – chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos, and orangutans – are threatened by agricultural expansion particularly from rice, cacao, cassava, maize, and oil palm cultivation. Agriculture replaces and fragments great ape habitats, bringing them closer to humans and often resulting in conflict. Though the impact of agriculture on great ape...

The close phylogenetic relationship between humans and nonhuman primates (hereafter primates), coupled with mounting anthropogenic impacts, such as habitat change, wildmeat hunting, pet-keeping, and tourism, increases disease risks for primates and humans by facilitating zoonotic pathogen exchange and altering host-pathogen interactions. Infectious...

The majority of nonhuman primates are found in habitats impacted by humans. Therefore, conservation interventions in anthropogenic landscapes are critical for the long-term survival of primate populations. Due to their intelligence and socioecological flexibility, many primates exhibit behaviours deemed problematic such as crop feeding, property da...

Forest-agricultural mosaics are now considered critical for biodiversity. Within these landscapes, the type of land use surrounding remnant forests influences the ability of arboreal non-flying wildlife to travel, disperse and ultimately survive, making arboreal species disproportionally impacted from habitat change. To inform land management strat...

The emergence of infectious diseases, such as COVID‐19, impacts livelihood strategies and conservation tools reliant on human‐wildlife interactions, such as wildlife‐based tourism and research. This is particularly relevant to great ape conservation, as humans and great apes are susceptible to being infected by similar pathogens. Evidence‐based str...

Primates, represented by 521 species, are distributed across 91 countries primarily in the Neotropic, Afrotropic, and Indo-Malayan realms. Primates inhabit a wide range of habitats and play critical roles in sustaining healthy ecosystems that benefit human and nonhuman communities. Approximately 68% of primate species are threatened with extinction...

PEN: Primate Eye Newsletter https://sway.office.com/1pfyBZZsIym0ybp8?ref=Link We ask your help in sharing the materials 'Protect Great Apes from Disease' has developed with African great ape tourism and/or research sites, tourism organisations, tour operators, and any other organisations or locations that might help spread this important informat...

Large animal species are most likely to survive human-induced rapid environmental change if they display high levels of behavioural flexibility. Examining social responses in species that form closely bonded social groups and display high fission–fusion dynamics, such as chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, will help determine their resilience to dynamic...

Culture, while long viewed as exclusively human, has now been demonstrated across diverse taxa and contexts. However, most animal culture data are constrained to well-studied, habituated groups. This is the case for chimpanzees, arguably the most ‘cultural’ non-human species. While much progress has been made charting wild chimpanzees’ cultural rep...

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...

As primate tourism resumes globally, we need action NOW. We ask anyone who has contacts with African great ape tourism sites and tourism organisation to use and share these materials. Please contact protectgreatapes@gmail.com for more information and with any questions. The 'Protect Great Apes from Disease' materials are available now at www.prote...

O babuíno da Guiné (Papio papio), que é simultaneamente a espécie de babuínos mais ameaçada e a menos investigada, foi reportado como estando a diminuir na Guiné-Bissau devido à intensa pressão exercida pelas atividades antropogénicas. Es-tes resultados motivaram investigação dirigida à biologia, ecologia, evolução, parasitologia e conservação das...

Large video datasets of wild animal behavior are crucial to produce longitudinal research and accelerate conser-vation efforts; however, large-scale behavior analyses continue to be severely constrained by time and resources. We present a deep convolutional neural network approach and fully automated pipeline to detect and track two audiovisually d...

Agroforest mosaics represent one of the most extensive human-impacted terrestrial systems worldwide and play an increasingly critical role in wildlife conservation. In such dynamic shared landscapes, coexistence can be compromised if people view wildlife as a source of infectious disease. A cross-disciplinary One Health knowledge base can help to i...

Humans are considered as the main host for Mycobacterium leprae1, the aetiological agent of leprosy, but spillover has occurred to other mammals that are now maintenance hosts, such as nine-banded armadillos and red squirrels2,3. Although naturally acquired leprosy has also been described in captive nonhuman primates4–7, the exact origins of infect...

Humans are considered as the main host for Mycobacterium leprae1, the aetiological agent of leprosy, but spillover has occurred to other mammals that are now maintenance hosts, such as nine-banded armadillos and red squirrels2,3. Although naturally acquired leprosy has also been described in captive nonhuman primates4-7, the exact origins of infect...

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...

As the COVID‐19 pandemic continues to affect societies across the world, the ongoing economic and social disruptions are likely to present fundamental challenges for current and future biodiversity conservation. We review the literature for outcomes of past major societal, political, economic and zoonotic perturbations on biodiversity conservation,...

The global road network is expanding at an unprecedented rate, threatening the persistence of many species. Yet, even for the most endangered wildlife, crucial information on the distance up to which roads impact species abundance is lacking. Here we use ecological threshold analysis to quantify the road‐effect zone (REZ) for the critically endange...

Wild chimpanzee tool use is highly diverse and, in many cases, exhibits cultural variation: tool-use behaviours and techniques differ between communities and are passed down generations through social learning. Honey dipping – the use of sticks or leaves to extract honey from hives – has been identified across the whole species’ range. Nonetheless,...

Human-wildlife coexistence is possible when animals can meet their ecological requirements while managing human-induced risks. Understanding how wildlife balance these trade-offs in anthropogenic environments is crucial to develop effective strategies to reduce risks of negative interactions, including bi-directional aggression and disease transmis...

Coexistence between humans and wildlife is possible when animals are able to meet their ecological requirements while managing human-induced risks. Other than large carnivores, examination of fine-scale spatiotemporal interactions with humans have rarely been applied to threatened wildlife such as great apes, whose conservation relies on persistenc...

Humans are considered the main host for Mycobacterium leprae , the aetiologic agent of leprosy, but spill-over to other mammals such as nine-banded armadillos and red squirrels occurs. Although naturally acquired leprosy has also been described in captive nonhuman primates, the exact origins of infection remain unclear. Here, we report on leprosy-l...

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...

Endangered wildlife increasingly inhabits human-dominated landscapes outside protected areas. Large-bodied mammals require large spaces, and their ranging may be especially impacted by landscape modifications including farming, road development and urbanisation. We studied the Wagaisa community of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in Uganda, which inha...

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...

Understanding the capacity for humans to share resources (crops, wild foods, space) with large-bodied wildlife is vital for biodiversity conservation and human wellbeing, and requires comprehensive examination of their temporal interactions over fine spatial scales. We combined ecological (plant identification, wild fruit availability plots, animal...

Humans and alcohol have shared a very long history. In this final chapter, we highlight some of the key findings that emerge from the chapters in this book, in particular the evolutionary history of our adaptation to alcohol consumption and the social role that alcohol consumption plays, and has played, in human societies across the world. This rai...

Local Manon people and wild chimpanzees coexist at Bossou in Guinea, West Africa, and overlap in their use of many resources. Wine from the raffia palm ( Raphia hookeri, Arecaceae) is widely consumed and is an integral part of people’s daily lives and ceremonies. It functions as a social lubricant and is a crucial aspect of men’s social relations....

Ethanol (or, as it is more popularly known, alcohol) use has a long and ubiquitous history. The prevailing tendency to view alcohol merely as a ‘social problem’ or the popular notion that alcohol only serves to provide us with a ‘hedonic’ high, masks its importance in the social fabric of many human societies both past and present. To understand al...

As animal populations continue to decline, frequently driven by large‐scale land‐use change, there is a critical need for improved environmental planning. While data‐driven spatial planning is widely applied in conservation, as of yet it is rarely used for primates. The western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) declined by 80% within 24 years and...

In recent decades, researchers have increasingly documented the impact of anthropogenic activities on wild animals, particularly in relation to changes in behaviour. However, whether human-induced behavioural changes in wildlife may be considered evidence of cultural evolution remains an open question. We explored whether behavioural responses to d...

LETTER In their Report “Human impact erodes chimpanzee behavioral diversity” (29 March, p. 1453), H. S. Kühl et al. find that chimpanzees in modified landscapes show low behavioral diversity and propose the establishment of “chimpanzee cultural heritage sites” to safeguard behavioral variation. We are concerned that their conclusion propagates a vi...

Human activities impact the distribution of numerous species. Anthropogenic habitats are often fragmented, and wildlife must navigate through human-influenced and ‘natural’ parts of the landscape to access resources. Different methods to determine the home-range areas of nonhuman primates have not considered the additional complexities of ranging i...

One of the main challenges when integrating biological and social perspectives in primatology is overcoming interdisciplinary barriers. Unfamiliarity with subject-specific theory and language, distinct disciplinary-bound approaches to research, and academic boundaries aimed at “preserving the integrity” of subject disciplines can hinder development...

Background West African landscapes are largely characterised by complex agroforest mosaics. Although the West African forests are considered a nonhuman primate hotspot, knowledge on the distribution of many species is often lacking and out-of-date. Considering the fast-changing nature of the landscapes in this region, up-to-date information on prim...

List of geographic locations including protected or unprotected areas identified as priority for future primate surveys. Numbers in brackets under the Areas column only refer to protected areas Data source: UNEP - WCMC Protected Planet (2014–2018) Available at: http//:www.protectedplanet.net. 1(Galat, Galat-Luong & Nizinski, 2009) conducted surveys...

People are an inescapable aspect of most environments inhabited by nonhuman primates today. Consequently, interest has grown in how primates adjust their behavior to live in anthropogenic habitats. However, our understanding of primate behavioral flexibility and the degree to which it will enable primates to survive alongside people in the long ter...

With the conversion of natural habitats to farmland, nonhuman primates (hereafter primates) are increasingly exposed to agricultural crops. Although frugivorous primates are important seed dispersers that sometimes feed on agricultural fruits, evidence for dispersal of crops by primates is lacking. Here, we examine flexible feeding on cacao (Theobr...

This paper incorporates research conducted by Cláudia Sousa and demonstrates the importance of examining chimpanzee behavioural flexibility alongside chimpanzee interactions with local people for the conservation of biodiversity in anthropogenic habitats. © 2016, Centro em Rede de Investigacao em Antropologia. All rights reserved.

This dossier pays homage to the primatologist Cláudia Sousa and is the result of a seminar held in her memory. It collates the presentations of Cláudia’s colleagues on themes that demonstrate not only the importance of her work but also the legacy that she left. It highlights the potential for novel ways to bring together social and human sciences...

This dossier pays homage to the primatologist Cláudia Sousa and is the result of a seminar held in her memory. It collates the presentations of Cláudia’s colleagues on themes that demonstrate not only the importance of her work but also the legacy that she left. It highlights the potential for novel ways to bring together social and human sciences...

This paper incorporates research conducted by Cláudia Sousa and demonstrates the importance of examining chimpanzee behavioural flexibility alongside chimpanzee interactions with local people for the conservation of biodiversity in anthropogenic habitats.

One of the challenges facing primate conservation is the rising level of interaction between humans and primates, and the resulting conflicts that might emerge. Living alongside primates can impose costs upon local people that are frequently cited as the “drivers” of conflict, including crop feeding, livestock depredation, property damage, and aggr...

The welfare of nonhuman animals in captivity is widely dependent on the natural psychological, physical, and behavioral needs of the animals and how adequately these needs are met. Inability to engage in natural behaviors can lead to chronic stress and expression of stereotypic behavior. The majority of research on decreasing stereotypic behavior i...

Despite intensive observation of nonhuman great apes during long-term field studies, observations of great ape births in the wild are rare. Research on wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Bossou in the Republic of Guinea has been ongoing for 35 years, yet chimpanzee parturitions have been observed on only two occasions. Here we provide info...

African apes and humans share a genetic mutation that enables them to effectively metabolize ethanol. However, voluntary ethanol consumption in this evolutionary radiation is documented only in modern humans. Here, we report evidence of the long-term and recurrent ingestion of ethanol from the raffia palm (Raphia hookeri, Arecaceae) by wild chimpan...

Table S1. The % ABV of palm sap from 16 raffia palms, collected at 2-hr intervals (i.e. 08:00-18.00 h) throughout the day. Table S2. Palm wine drinking sessions and events by chimpanzees, including date, start time, chimpanzee name, age (yr) and sex of imbiber, palm wine drinking duration (min), quantity of palm wine consumed (l), leaf dip rate (di...

We are in a new epoch, the Anthropocene, and research into our closest living relatives, the great apes, must keep pace with the rate that our species is driving change. While a goal of many studies is to understand how great apes behave in natural contexts, the impact of human activities must increasingly be taken into account. This is both a chal...

With rising conversion of "natural" habitat to other land use such as agriculture, nonhuman primates are increasingly exploiting areas influenced by people and their activities. Despite the conservation importance of understanding the ways in which primates modify their behavior to human pressures, data are lacking, even for well-studied species. U...

Plant food sharing by wild unrelated chimpanzees is infrequent, although increasingly reported across Africa. Recent findings suggest between-community differences in the characteristics of shared plant foods and transfer patterns. However, the role of food size in sharing remains untested. From direct observations, we report the passive sharing of...

![Figure][1] Perceived threat. Fear complicates conservation. PHOTO: BARDROCK/WIKIMEDIA COMMONS In their Perspective, “Tolerance for predatory wildlife” (2 May, p. [476][2]), A. Treves and J. Bruskotter argue that when examining reasons for intolerance of and intention to kill predators

Increasing human populations and the rapid conversion of forest to agricultural land increase the likelihood of interac-tions and conflict between humans and nonhuman primates. Understanding such interactions requires a broad cross-disciplinary approach that assesses the implications of sympatry for primate conservation and human social, cultural a...

Many studies show agreement within and between populations and cultures for general judgments of facial attractiveness. Studies that have examined the attractiveness of specific traits have also highlighted cross-cultural differences for factors such as symmetry, averageness, and masculinity. One trait that should be preferred across cultures is he...

Modification of natural areas by human activities mostly has a negative impact on wildlife by increasing the geographical and ecological overlap between people and animals. This can result in escalating levels of competition and conflict between humans and wildlife, for example over crops. However, data on specific crops and crop parts that are una...

Crop-raiding is a major source of conflict between people and wildlife globally, impacting local livelihoods and impeding conservation. Conflict mitigation strategies that target problematic wildlife behaviours such as crop-raiding are notoriously difficult to develop for large-bodied, cognitively complex species. Many crop-raiders are generalist f...

List of crops cultivated in chimpanzee range countries and their potential to cause human–chimpanzee conflict. Cultivars are listed if they are recorded eaten by wild chimpanzees at ≥1 site, and/or they are harvested in ≥1 range country in areas greater than 1000 ha, according to FAOSTAT (for 2009). (PDF)

Why did our earliest hominin ancestors begin to walk bipedally as their main form of terrestrial travel? The lack of sufficient fossils and differing interpretations of existing ones leave unresolved the debate about what constitutes the earliest evidence of habitual bipedality. Compelling evidence shows that this shift coincided with climatic chan...

Interactions between wildlife species are numerous and diverse, ranging from commensalism to predation. Information on cross-species interactions in anthropogenic habitats are rare but can serve to improve our understanding of animal behavioural and ecological flexibility in response to human-induced changes. Here we report direct observations of i...

The chimpanzees of Bossou (Pan troglodytes verus) have been forced to adapt ecologically and behaviorally to the various costs and benefits of living in a human-dominated environment. The chimpanzees frequently feed on cultivated foods; however, significant variation exists in the importance of such foods in the chimpanzees’ diet. Certain crops are...

Regularities in spatial patterns are a well-known occurrence in the animal kingdom; for example, during dangerous excursions certain positions may be more advantageous than others, depending upon age and sex. Road-crossing, a human-created challenge, presents chimpanzees with a situation that calls for flexibility of sociospatial and behavioral res...