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Caloric restriction increases lifespan but affects brain integrity in grey mouse lemur primates Open
The health benefits of chronic caloric restriction resulting in lifespan extension are well established in many short-lived species, but the effects in humans and other primates remain controversial. Here we report the most advanced surviv…
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Shifting ranges and conservation challenges for lemurs in the face of climate change Open
Geospatial modeling is one of the most powerful tools available to conservation biologists for estimating current species ranges of Earth's biodiversity. Now, with the advantage of predictive climate models, these methods can be deployed f…
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Patterns of seasonality and group membership characterize the gut microbiota in a longitudinal study of wild Verreaux's sifakas (<i>Propithecus verreauxi</i>) Open
The intestinal microbiota plays a major role in host development, metabolism, and health. To date, few longitudinal studies have investigated the causes and consequences of microbiota variation in wildlife, although such studies provide a …
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Evolving through day and night: origin and diversification of activity pattern in modern primates Open
Activity patterns have profound implications on primates’ morphology, physiology, and behavior and have likely driven their diversification. The last common ancestor of extant primates has been traditionally considered nocturnal although t…
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Parasite–microbiota interactions potentially affect intestinal communities in wild mammals Open
Detecting interaction between species is notoriously difficult, and disentangling species associations in host‐related gut communities is especially challenging. Nevertheless, due to contemporary methods, including metabarcoding and 16S se…
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Geogenetic patterns in mouse lemurs (genus <i>Microcebus</i> ) reveal the ghosts of Madagascar's forests past Open
Phylogeographic analysis can be described as the study of the geological and climatological processes that have produced contemporary geographic distributions of populations and species. Here, we attempt to understand how the dynamic proce…
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The Use of an Invasive Species Habitat by a Small Folivorous Primate: Implications for Lemur Conservation in Madagascar Open
The lemurs of Madagascar are among the most threatened mammalian taxa in the world, with habitat loss due to shifting cultivation and timber harvest heavily contributing to their precarious state. Deforestation often leads to fragmentation…
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LemurFaceID: a face recognition system to facilitate individual identification of lemurs Open
Background Long-term research of known individuals is critical for understanding the demographic and evolutionary processes that influence natural populations. Current methods for individual identification of many animals include capture a…
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The Indris Have Got Rhythm! Timing and Pitch Variation of a Primate Song Examined between Sexes and Age Classes Open
A crucial, common feature of speech and music is that they show non-random structures over time. It is an open question which of the other species share rhythmic abilities with humans, but in most cases the lack of knowledge about their be…
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Terrestriality and bacterial transfer: a comparative study of gut microbiomes in sympatric Malagasy mammals Open
The gut microbiomes of mammals appear to mirror their hosts’ phylogeny, suggesting host-driven microbial community assembly. Yet, much of this evidence stems from comparative studies of distinct wild or captive populations that lack data f…
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Eco-evo-devo of the lemur syndrome: did adaptive behavioral plasticity get canalized in a large primate radiation? Open
We propose a new hypothesis linking ecological, physiological, developmental and evolutionary processes to adumbrate a comprehensive explanation for the evolution of the lemur syndrome, whose assumptions and predictions can guide diverse f…
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A role for gut microbiota in host niche differentiation Open
If gut microbes influence host behavioral ecology in the short term, over evolutionary time, they could drive host niche differentiation. We explored this possibility by comparing the gut microbiota of Madagascar’s folivorous lemurs from I…
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Social behaviour and gut microbiota in red‐bellied lemurs (<i><span>E</span>ulemur rubriventer</i>): In search of the role of immunity in the evolution of sociality Open
Vertebrate gut microbiota form a key component of immunity and a dynamic link between an individual and the ecosystem. Microbiota might play a role in social systems as well, because microbes are transmitted during social contact and can a…
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Reading wild minds: A computational assay of Theory of Mind sophistication across seven primate species Open
Theory of Mind (ToM), i.e. the ability to understand others' mental states, endows humans with highly adaptive social skills such as teaching or deceiving. Candidate evolutionary explanations have been proposed for the unique sophisticatio…
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A comparative study of the neural stem cell niche in the adult hypothalamus of human, mouse, rat and gray mouse lemur (<i>Microcebus murinus</i>) Open
The adult brain contains niches of neural stem cells that continuously add new neurons to selected circuits throughout life. Two niches have been extensively studied in various mammalian species including humans, the subventricular zone of…
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The Mouse Lemur, a Genetic Model Organism for Primate Biology, Behavior, and Health Open
Systematic genetic studies of a handful of diverse organisms over the past 50 years have transformed our understanding of biology. However, many aspects of primate biology, behavior, and disease are absent or poorly modeled in any of the c…
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Local awareness and perceptions: consequences for conservation of marsh habitat at Lake Alaotra for one of the world's rarest lemurs Open
Management and monitoring of community-based protected areas in Madagascar remain challenging because of a lack of financial, human and technical resources, and capacity. At Lake Alaotra, conversion of marshland for rice cultivation and a …
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Hibernation in the pygmy slow loris (Nycticebus pygmaeus): multiday torpor in primates is not restricted to Madagascar Open
Hibernation and short daily torpor are states of energy conservation with reduced metabolism and body temperature. Both hibernation, also called multiday torpor and daily torpor are common among mammals and occur in at least 11 orders. Wit…
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Mix it and fix it: functions of composite olfactory signals in ring-tailed lemurs Open
Animals communicating via scent often deposit composite signals that incorporate odorants from multiple sources; however, the function of mixing chemical signals remains understudied. We tested both a ‘multiple-messages’ and a ‘fixative’ h…
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Diversity of photoreceptor arrangements in nocturnal, cathemeral and diurnal Malagasy lemurs Open
The lemurs of Madagascar (Primates: Lemuriformes) are a monophyletic group that has lived in isolation from other primates for about 50 million years. Lemurs have diversified into species with diverse daily activity patterns and correspond…
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Patterns of Gut Bacterial Colonization in Three Primate Species Open
Host fitness is impacted by trillions of bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract that facilitate development and are inextricably tied to life history. During development, microbial colonization primes the gut metabolism and physiology, the…
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Impacts of habitat loss and fragmentation on the activity budget, ranging ecology and habitat use of Bale monkeys (<i>Chlorocebus djamdjamensis</i>) in the southern Ethiopian Highlands Open
Understanding the extent to which primates in forest fragments can adjust behaviorally and ecologically to changes caused by deforestation is essential to designing conservation management plans. During a 12‐month period, we studied the ef…
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Is wounding aggression in zoo-housed chimpanzees and ring-tailed lemurs related to zoo visitor numbers? Open
Chimpanzees in laboratory colonies experience more wounds on weekdays than on weekends, which has been attributed to the increased number of people present during the week; thus, the presence of more people was interpreted as stressful. If…
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Gut microbiota of ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) vary across natural and captive populations and correlate with environmental microbiota Open
Background Inter-population variation in host-associated microbiota reflects differences in the hosts’ environments, but this characterization is typically based on studies comparing few populations. The diversity of natural habitats and c…
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Lemurs Optimizer: A New Metaheuristic Algorithm for Global Optimization Open
The Lemur Optimizer (LO) is a novel nature-inspired algorithm we propose in this paper. This algorithm’s primary inspirations are based on two pillars of lemur behavior: leap up and dance hub. These two principles are mathematically modele…
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Innovation and behavioral flexibility in wild redfronted lemurs (Eulemur rufifrons) Open
Innovations and problem-solving abilities can provide animals with important ecological advantages as they allow individuals to deal with novel social and ecological challenges. Innovation is a solution to a novel problem or a novel soluti…
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Comparative ACE2 variation and primate COVID-19 risk Open
The emergence of the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, which in humans is highly infectious and leads to the potentially fatal disease COVID-19, has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and huge global disruption. The viral infection may als…
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Are "visitor effects" overestimated? Behaviour in captive lemurs is mainly driven by co-variation with time and weather Open
The potential influence of visitors on behaviour of captive animals is well known. However, little research on “visitor effects” has also evaluated time of day and weather, which can affect behaviour directly and often also co-vary with vi…
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Implications of lemuriform extinctions for the Malagasy flora Open
Significance Madagascar is a conservation priority because of its unique and threatened biodiversity. Lemurs, by acting as seed dispersers, are essential to maintaining healthy and diverse forests on the island. However, in the past few th…
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Population- and Individual-Level Dynamics of the Intestinal Microbiota of a Small Primate Open
Longitudinal sampling for intestinal microbiota in wild animals is difficult, leading to a lack of information on bacterial dynamics occurring in nature. We studied how the composition of microbiota communities changed temporally in free-r…