Mimi Arandjelovic

• PhD
• scientist at Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Obtaining reliable population size or abundance estimates of endangered species is critical for their conservation and management. Genotyping non-invasively collected samples is an effective way to gain insights into the number and grouping patterns of rare or elusive animals. In this study we used genetic capture-recapture estimators to obtain a p...

Population estimates using genetic capture-recapture methods from non-invasively collected wildlife samples are more accurate and precise than those obtained from traditional methods when detection and resampling rates are high. Recently, detection dogs have been increasingly used to find elusive species and their by-products. Here we compared the...

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...

The Pan African Programme: The cultured chimpanzee (PanAf) is a large-scale research project across the chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes ) range which aims to better understand and model the socioecological and demographic drivers of chimpanzee diversity. As part of the PanAf, over 350,000 1-minute camera trap videos have been recorded. To annotate thi...

Knowing the density or abundance of primate populations is essential for their conservation management and contextualizing socio-demographic and behavioral observations. When direct counts of animals are not possible, genetic analysis of non-invasive samples collected from wildlife populations allows estimates of population size with higher accurac...

The diversity and composition of mammal communities are strongly influenced by human activities, though these relationships may vary across broad scales. Understanding this variation is key to conservation, as it provides a baseline for planning and evaluating management interventions. We assessed variation in the structure and composition of Afrot...

Computer vision methods have demonstrated considerable potential to streamline ecological and biological workflows, with a growing number of datasets and models becoming available to the research community. However, these resources focus predominantly on evaluation using machine learning metrics, with relatively little emphasis on how their applica...

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...

Ongoing ecosystem change and biodiversity decline across the Afrotropics call for tools to monitor the state of biodiversity or ecosystem elements across extensive spatial and temporal scales. We assessed relationships in the co‐occurrence patterns between great apes and other medium to large‐bodied mammals to evaluate whether ape abundance serves...

Computer vision analysis of camera trap video footage is essential for wildlife conservation, as captured behaviours offer some of the earliest indicators of changes in population health. Recently, several high-impact animal behaviour datasets and methods have been introduced to encourage their use; however, the role of behaviour-correlated backgro...

How populations adapt to their environment is a fundamental question in biology. Yet, we know surprisingly little about this process, especially for endangered species, such as nonhuman great apes. Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, are particularly notable because they inhabit diverse habitats, from rainforest to woodland-savannah. Whether...

Strontium isotope (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) analysis with reference to strontium isotope landscapes (Sr isoscapes) allows reconstructing mobility and migration in archaeology, ecology, and forensics. However, despite the vast potential of research involving ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr analysis particularly in Africa, Sr isoscapes remain unavailable for the largest parts of the co...

How populations adapt to their environment is a fundamental question in biology. Yet we know surprisingly little about this process, especially for endangered species such as non-human great apes. Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, are particularly interesting because they inhabit diverse habitats, from rainforest to woodland-savannah. Whet...

As camera trapping grows in popularity and application, some analytical limitations persist including processing time and accuracy of data annotation. Typically images are recorded by camera traps although videos are becoming increasingly collected even though they require much more time for annotation. To overcome limitations with image annotation...

The rapid growth of clean energy technologies is driving a rising demand for critical minerals. In 2022 at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15), seven major economies formed an alliance to enhance the sustainability of mining these essential decarbonization minerals. However, there is a scarcity of st...

We present the PanAf20K dataset, the largest and most diverse open-access annotated video dataset of great apes in their natural environment. It comprises more than 7 million frames across ∼\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \us...

Precise estimates of population dynamics and social grouping patterns are required for effective conservation of wild animal populations. It is difficult to obtain such information on non‐human great apes as they have slow reproductive rates. To gain a better understanding of demography in these populations, previous research has typically involved...

The rapid growth of clean energy technologies is driving a rising demand for critical minerals. In 2022 at the UN Biodiversity Conference (COP 15), seven major economies formed an alliance to enhance the sustainability of mining these essential decarbonization minerals. However, there is a scarcity of studies assessing the threat of mining to globa...

The question of how behavioural diversity in humans and other animals is shaped by the combined influence of demography, genetics, culture, and the environment receives much research attention. We take a macro-ecological approach to evaluate how chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes ) behavioural diversity is spatially structured and associated with genetic...

The manual processing and analysis of videos from camera traps is time-consuming and includes several steps, ranging from the filtering of falsely triggered footage to identifying and re-identifying individuals. In this study, we developed a pipeline to automatically analyze videos from camera traps to identify individuals without requiring manual...

The metabarcoding of vertebrate DNA found in invertebrate-derived DNA (iDNA) has proven a powerful tool for monitoring biodiversity. To date, iDNA has primarily been used to detect the presence/absence of particular taxa using metabarcoding, though recent efforts demonstrated the potential utility of these data for estimating relative animal abunda...

The manual processing and analysis of videos from camera traps is time-consuming and includes several steps, ranging from the filtering of falsely triggered footage to identifying and re-identifying individuals. In this study, we developed a pipeline to automatically analyze videos from camera traps to identify individuals without requiring manual...

Studies of the evolutionary relationships among gorilla populations using autosomal and mitochondrial sequences suggest that male-mediated gene flow may have been important in the past, but data on the Y-chromosomal relationships among the gorilla subspecies are limited. Here, we genotyped blood and noninvasively collected fecal samples from 12 cap...

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...

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...

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...

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 C4 plant feeding termites by chimpanzees may partly explain the relatively high carbon isotope values reported for some chimpanzee communities. However, the modest availability o...

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

Noninvasive samples as a source of DNA are gaining interest in genomic studies of endangered species. However, their complex nature and low endogenous DNA content hamper the recovery of good quality data. Target capture has become a productive method to enrich the endogenous fraction of noninvasive samples, such as faeces, but its sensitivity has n...

Citizen science has grown rapidly in popularity in recent years due to its potential to educate and engage the public while providing a means to address a myriad of scientific questions. However, the rise in popularity of citizen science has also been accompanied by concerns about the quality of data emerging from citizen science research projects....

Primates often consume either bark or cambium (inner bark) as a fallback food to complete their diet during periods of food scarcity. Wild chimpanzees exhibit great behavioral diversity across Africa, as studies of new populations frequently reveal. Since 2014, we have been using a combination of camera traps and indirect signs to study the ecology...

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.

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...

The social structure of primates has recently been shown to influence the composition of their microbiomes. What is less clear is how primate microbiomes might in turn influence their social behavior, either in general or with particular reference to hominins. Here we use a comparative approach to understand how microbiomes of hominins have, or mig...

Genetic estimation of population sizes has been critical for monitoring cryptic and rare species; however, population estimates do not inherently reveal the permanence or stability of the population under study. Thus, it is important to monitor not only the number of individuals in a population, but also how they are associated in groups and how th...

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...

Background Metabarcoding of vertebrate DNA found in invertebrates (iDNA) represents a potentially powerful tool for monitoring biodiversity. Preliminary evidence suggests fly iDNA biodiversity assessments compare favorably with established approaches such as camera trapping or line transects. Aims and Methods To assess whether fly‐derived iDNA is...

Social network analysis provides valuable opportunities to quantify the nature of social relationships in animal societies including aspects of group structure, dynamics and behaviour transmission. Remote monitoring approaches such as camera trapping offer rich data sets from groups and species that are difficult to observe, yet the robustness of t...

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...

Large‐scale genomic studies of wild animal populations are often limited by access to high‐quality DNA. Although noninvasive samples, such as faeces, can be readily collected, DNA from the sample producers is usually present in low quantities, fragmented, and contaminated by microorganism and dietary DNAs. Hybridization capture can help to overcome...

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...

Temperament and personality research in humans and nonhuman animals measures behavioral variation in individual, population, or species-specific traits with implications for survival and fitness, such as social status, foraging, and mating success [1-5]. Curiosity and risk-taking tendencies have been studied extensively across taxa by measuring bol...

Human and simian immunodeficiency viruses (HIV/SIVs) use CD4 as the primary receptor to enter target cells. Here, we show that the chimpanzee CD4 is highly polymorphic, with nine coding variants present in wild populations, and that this diversity interferes with SIV envelope (Env)–CD4 interactions. Testing the replication fitness of SIVcpz strains...

The social organization of a group‐living animal is defined by a balance between group dynamic events such as group formation, group dissolution, and dispersal events and group stability in membership and over time. Understanding these processes, which are relevant for questions ranging from disease transmission patterns to the evolution of polygyn...

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...

Target capture approach has improved over the past years, proving to be very efficient tool for selectively sequencing genetic regions of interest. These methods have also allowed the use of non-invasive samples such as feces (characterized by their low quantity and quality of endogenous DNA) to be used in conservation genomic, evolution, and popul...

Vast, pristine ecosystems and their biodiversity are vanishing globally at frightening speed, but many large tracts of wilderness have not yet been systematically inventoried and important natural populations of threatened species remain poorly characterized. The forest-savanna ecotone of the Eastern Central African Republic (CAR) is one such poorl...

Anthrax is a globally important animal disease and zoonosis. Despite this, our current knowledge of anthrax ecology is largely limited to arid ecosystems, where outbreaks are most commonly reported. Here we show that the dynamics of an anthrax-causing agent, Bacillus cereus biovar anthracis, in a tropical rainforest have severe consequences for loc...

The global population of the critically endangered western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) has dramatically declined by more than 80% over the last three generations (i.e. 69 years) (Humle et al., 2016). In Ghana, the species was thought to be locally extinct or nearly extinct (Caldecott & Miles, 2005), until their continuous presence was docume...

Bushmeat represents an important source of animal protein for humans in tropical Africa. Unsustainable bushmeat hunting is a major threat to wildlife and its consumption is associated with an increased risk of acquiring zoonotic diseases, such as Ebola virus disease (EVD). During the recent EVD outbreak in West Africa, it is likely that human dieta...

Our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, have a complex demographic history. We analyzed the high-coverage whole genomes of 75 wild-born chimpanzees and bonobos from 10 countries in Africa. We found that chimpanzee population substructure makes genetic information a good predictor of geographic origin at country and regional scales. M...

Of chimpanzees and bonobos Modern non-African human genomes contain genomic remnants that suggest that there was interbreeding between ancient humans and archaic hominoid lineages. Now, de Manuel et al. show similar ancestral interbreeding between the ancestors of today's chimpanzees and bonobos (see the Perspective by Hoelzel). The study also prov...

The study of the archaeological remains of fossil hominins must rely on reconstructions to elucidate the behaviour that may have resulted in particular stone tools and their accumulation. Comparatively, stone tool use among living primates has illuminated behaviours that are also amenable to archaeological examination, permitting direct observation...

The Pan African Programme: The cultured chimpanzee (PanAf) is a large-scale research project across the chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes ) range which aims to better understand and model the socioecological and demographic drivers of chimpanzee diversity. As part of the PanAf, over 350,000 1-minute camera trap videos have been recorded. To annotate thi...

As habitat degradation and fragmentation continue to impact wildlife populations around the world, it is critical to understand the behavioral flexibility of species in these environments. In Uganda, the mostly unprotected forest fragment landscape between the Budongo and Bugoma Forests is a potential corridor for chimpanzees, yet little is known a...

Genes encoded by the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are crucial for the recognition and presentation of antigens to the immune system. In contrast to their closest relatives, chimpanzees and humans, much less is known about variation in gorillas at these loci. This study explored the exon 2 variation of -DPB1, -DQB1, and -DRB genes in 46 go...

Populations of an organism living in marked geographical or evolutionary isolation from other populations of the same species are often termed subspecies and expected to show some degree of genetic distinctiveness. The common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is currently described as four geographically delimited subspecies: the western (P. t. verus),...

Dispersal and grouping patterns form the foundations of social interactions in group-living mammals and are the outcomes of a complex interplay between inbreeding avoidance, kin cooperation and competition, predation pressure and food resource distribution. In species where both sexes disperse, the potential for kin-biased associations would seem l...

Compared with other African apes, eastern gorillas (Gorilla beringei) have been little studied genetically. We used analysis of autosomal DNA genotypes obtained from non-invasively collected faecal samples to estimate the evolutionary histories of the two extant mountain gorilla populations and the closely related eastern lowland gorillas. Our resu...

To understand the evolutionary histories and conservation potential of wild animal species it is useful to assess whether taxa are genetically structured into different populations and identify the underlying factors responsible for any clustering. Landscape features such as rivers may influence genetic population structure, and analysis of structu...

Border cell cluster (BCC) migration in the Drosophila ovary is an excellent system to study the gene regulatory network that enables collective cell migration. Here, we identify the large Maf transcription factor Traffic jam (Tj) as an important regulator of BCC migration. Tj has a multifaceted impact on the known core cascade that enables BCC moti...

Owing to their high abundance in eukaryotic genomes, bisexual mode of inheritance and hyper‐mutability, microsatellites have quickly developed into an invaluable tool in molecular and wildlife genetics. Despite their widespread application, microsatellites have only marginally been used in studies utilising ancient/historical materials. This is pri...

Background: Many group-living species display strong sex biases in dispersal tendencies. However, gene flow mediated by apparently philopatric sex may still occur and potentially alters population structure. In our closest living evolutionary relatives, dispersal of adult males seems to be precluded by high levels of territoriality between males o...

Today many large mammals live in small, fragmented populations, but it is often unclear whether this subdivision is the result of long-term or recent events. Demographic modeling using genetic data can estimate changes in long-term population sizes while temporal sampling provides a way to compare genetic variation present today with that sampled i...