Sharon E Kessler

University of Stirling · Department of Psychology

Parasite infestations depend on multiple host-related and environmental factors. In the case of ectoparasites, which are exposed to the environment beyond the host, an impact of climate, expressed by seasonal or yearly variations, can be expected. However, long-term dynamics of ectoparasite infestations are rarely studied in nonhuman primates. We i...

Cysts and trophozoites of vestibuliferid ciliates and larvae of Strongyloides were found in fecal samples from captive orangutans Pongo pygmaeus and P. abelii from Czech and Slovak zoological gardens. As comparative material, ciliates from semi-captive mandrills Mandrillus sphinx from Gabon were included in the study. Phylogenetic analysis of the d...

Sucking lice live in intimate association with their hosts and often display a high degree of host specificity. The present study investigated sucking lice of the genus Lemurpediculus from six mouse lemur (Microcebus) and two dwarf lemur (Cheirogaleus) species endemic to the island of Madagascar, considered a biodiversity hotspot. Louse phylogeneti...

Madagascar`s flora and fauna have evolved in relative isolation since the island split from the African and Indian continents. When the last common ancestors of lemurs left Africa between 40-70 million years ago, they carried within them a subset of the viral diversity of the mainland population, which continued to evolve throughout the lemur radia...

Mammalian captive dietary specialists like folivores are prone to gastrointestinal distress and primate dietary specialists suffer the greatest gut microbiome diversity losses in captivity compared to the wild. Marmosets represent another group of dietary specialists, exudivores that eat plant exudates, but whose microbiome remains relatively less...

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed an urgent need for a comprehensive, multidisciplinary understanding of how healthcare systems respond successfully to infectious pathogens –and how they fail. This paper contributes a novel perspective that focuses on the selective pressures that shape healthcare systems over evolutionary time. We use a comparativ...

The media is a powerful force that can affect the welfare of the domiciled dog population. Dogs have long been in human stories and their depictions can create demand for the breeds shown. While previous research has found that this effect can last for up to ten years after the release of a movie, how this phenomenon occurs is unknown. This paper e...

Female primates signal impending ovulation with a suite of sexual signals. Studies of these signals have focussed on visual, and to a lesser extent, acoustic signals, neglecting olfactory signals. We aimed to investigate the information content of female olfactory signals in captive olive baboons ( Papio anubis ) and relate these to the female fert...

Eight species of ectoparasites were collected during 225 gray mouse lemur, Microcebus murinus (J. F. Miller), captures, in Ankarafantsika National Park, Madagascar, in 2010-2011. The ixodid tick, Haemaphysalis lemuris Hoogstraal, was the most common ectoparasite and was mostly represented by nymphs. Other ectoparasites recorded include the polyplac...

Acoustic phenotypic variation is of major importance for speciation and the evolution of species diversity. Whereas selective and stochastic forces shaping the acoustic divergence of signaling systems are well studied in insects, frogs, and birds, knowledge on the processes driving acoustic phenotypic evolution in mammals is limited. We quantified...

Members of the sucking louse genus Pedicinus are ectoparasites of cercopithecid primates in Africa, Asia, and Gibraltar. Pedicinus gabonensis n. sp. is described based on adult male and female specimens collected from the mandrill (Mandrillus sphinx) in Gabon. The new species is compared morphologically with other members of the genus Pedicinus, an...

One of the striking features of human social complexity is that we provide care to sick and contagious individuals, rather than avoiding them. Care-giving is a powerful strategy of disease control in human populations today; however, we are not the only species which provides care for the sick. Widespread reports occurring in distantly related spec...

A new chigger mite species, Schoutedenichia microcebi n. sp. is described from the grey mouse lemur Microcebus murinus (J.F. Miller) from Madagascar. The new species is closely related to S. dutoiti (Radford, 1948), a species described from a single specimen collected on a rodent in South Africa. Examination of the holotype and new material on S. d...

Microbiome studies show that host taxon, diet, and environment influence gut bacteria. However, these factors are rarely studied in animal hybrids and exudivores (which nutritionally exploit indigestible oligosaccharides). To investigate the effects of host taxon, hybridization, and environment on gut microbiota, we conducted 16S V4 ribosomal seque...

Frequent kin-biased coalitionary behaviour is a hallmark of mammalian social complexity. Furthermore, selection to understand complex social dynamics is believed to underlie the co-evolution of social complexity and large brains. Vocalisations have been shown to be an important mechanism with which large-brained mammals living in complex social gro...

Humans are the only species to have evolved cooperative care-giving as a strategy for disease control. A synthesis of evidence from the fossil record, paleogenomics, human ecology, and disease transmission models, suggests that care-giving for the diseased evolved as part of the unique suite of cognitive and socio-cultural specializations that are...

Lemurpediculus madagascariensis sp. nov. (Phthiraptera: Anoplura: Polyplacidae) is described from the Gray Mouse lemur, Microcebus murinus (J. F. Miller) (Primates: Cheirogaleidae), from Ankarafantsika National Park, Madagascar. Lemurs were trapped using Sherman Live Traps and visually inspected for lice, which were preserved in 90% ethanol. Adults...

The emergence of providing care to diseased conspecifics must have been a turning point during the evolution of hominin sociality. On a population level, care may have minimized the costs of socially transmitted diseases at a time of increasing social complexity, although individual care-givers probably incurred increased transmission risks. We pro...

Capture–recapture techniques have contributed greatly to primatology. This entry provides an overview of how researchers conduct capture–recapture studies of primates, what data can be collected, and what can be learned from that data. Capture–recapture studies enable researchers to study the distribution and movement of individuals throughout a ha...

The dwarf and mouse lemurs of Madagascar are two very species-rich lemur genera, yet there is a relative paucity of information on this primate family in published literature. In this first ever treatment of the Cheirogaleidae, international experts are brought together to review and integrate our current knowledge of the behaviour, physiology, eco...

Social complexity is argued to be a driving factor in the evolution of communicative complexity. Complex social systems require individuals to form relationships with many conspecifics and interact in a wide variety of contexts over time, thus selecting for acoustic communication systems complex enough to facilitate these relationships. To better u...

Many factors can influence the parasite load of animal hosts, but integrative studies that simultaneously investigate several factors are still rare in many taxonomic groups. This study investigates the influence of host species, host population density, parasite transmission mode, sex, and two temporal (month, year) factors on gastrointestinal par...

Though matriline-based social complexity is widespread across mammals and believed to be a product of kin selection, exactly how this evolved is unknown. The transition from the ancestral mammalian state of asociality to group-living is thought to have occurred through solitary foraging, in which animals forage alone, but maintain a social network...

Kin selection is a driving force in the evolution of mammalian social complexity and requires that kin are distinctive from nonkin. The transition from the ancestral state of asociality to the derived state of complex social groups is thought to have occurred via solitary foraging, in which individuals forage alone, but, unlike the asocial ancestor...

Maternal kin selection is a driving force in the evolution of mammalian social complexity and it requires that kin are distinctive from nonkin. The transition from the ancestral state of asociality to the derived state of complex social groups is thought to have occurred via solitary foraging, in which individuals forage alone, but, unlike the asoc...

Social complexity is argued to be a driving factor in the evolution of communicative complexity. Complex social systems require individuals to form relationships with many individuals and interact in a wide variety of contexts over time, thus selecting for acoustic communication systems complex enough to facilitate these relationships. However, the...

Background Kin selection is a driving force in the evolution of mammalian social complexity. Recognition of paternal kin using vocalizations occurs in taxa with cohesive, complex social groups. This is the first investigation of paternal kin recognition via vocalizations in a small-brained, solitary foraging mammal, the grey mouse lemur (Microcebus...

Paternal kin recognition can facilitate inbreeding avoidance and kin selection, but how such recognition evolves is not well understood. We aimed to conduct the first investigation of how paternal kinship is conveyed and recognized in the communication calls of a nongregarious nocturnal primate with a dispersed social system, the grey mouse lemur (...

Students frequently question the relevance of science lessons to complex, “real world” issues. As a graduate fellow working with fifth and sixth grade science students in Lowell Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona, I have found that incorporating lessons about my field research on wild primates has been an effective way to engage students. Studen...

This is the first detailed analysis of allonursing in a galago, a relatively nongregarious African strepsirrhine. Existing data on allonursing in galagos are scarce due to the difficulties of observing wild infant behavior in nocturnal species that frequently raise young in nests, and to the rarity of colonies with multiple co-housed lactating fema...