Find research datasets worth reusing
Search datasets from major research repositories and use ShareScore to quickly assess how well each record supports discovery, access, and reuse.
35
datasets available to search
ShareScore release 0.9.0
Dataset results
35 results for “wild chimpanzees”
Data for: Weak, but not strong, ties support coalition formation among wild female chimpanzees
<div> <div> <div> <div> <p>In social species, individuals may be able to overcome competitive constraints on cooperation by leveraging relationships with familiar, tolerant partners. While strong social ties have been linked to cooperation in several social mammals, it is unclear the extent to which weak social ties can support cooperation, particularly among non-kin. We tested the hypothesis that weakly affiliative social relationships support cooperative coalition formation using 10 years of behavioural data on wild female chimpanzees. Female chimpanzees typically disperse and reside with non-kin as adults. Their social relationships are differentiated but often relatively weak, with few dyads sharing strong bonds. Females occasionally form aggressive coalitions together. Three measures of relationship quality - party association, five-meter proximity, and whether a dyad groomed - positively predicted coalitions, indicating that relationship quality influenced coalition partnerships. However, dyads that groomed frequently did not form more coalitions than dyads that groomed occasionally, and kin did not cooperate more than expected given their relationship quality. Thus, strong bonds and kinship did not bolster cooperation. We conclude that cooperative coalitions among female chimpanzees depend on social tolerance but do not require strong bonds. Our findings highlight social tolerance as a distinct pathway through which females can cultivate cooperative relationships.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div>
Fig. 2. ITS1 in Wild chimpanzees are infected by Trypanosoma brucei
Fig. 2. ITS1-based dendogram of trypanosomes from primate tissue and fecal samples. Sequences generated in this study are marked as follows: T ‾ tissue samples of apes (TA) and monkeys (TM); F ‾ fecal samples of apes (FA); sequences retrieved from GenBank are labeled with Latin names (Trypanosoma sp. ex Wildebeest JN673403, for T. theileri JX178185, HQ664848, and HQ664849).
Fig. 1. ITS1 in Wild chimpanzees are infected by Trypanosoma brucei
Fig. 1. ITS1-based detection of trypanosomes in blood and feces of experimentally infected mice. (A‾D, I) detection in blood; (E‾H, J) detection in feces. (A, E) Trypanosoma b. brucei; (B, F) T. b. gambiense; (C, G) T. b. rhodesiense; (D, H) T. b. evansi; (I) blood from a non-infected mouse; (J) feces from a non-infected mouse; (K) negative control; (m) marker.
Data for: Weak, but not strong, ties support coalition formation among wild female chimpanzees
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data for: Evaluating the impact of physical frailty during ageing in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)
<p>While declining physical performance is an expected consequence of aging, human clinical research has placed increasing emphasis on physical frailty as a predictor of death and disability in the elderly. We examined non-invasive measures approximating frailty in a richly-sampled longitudinal dataset on wild chimpanzees. Using urinary creatinine to assess lean body mass, we demonstrated moderate but significant declines in physical condition with age in both sexes. While older chimpanzees spent less of their day in the trees and feeding, they did not alter activity budgets with respect to travel or resting. There was little evidence that declining lean body mass had negative consequences independent of age. Old chimpanzees with poor lean body mass rested more often but did not otherwise differ in activity. Males, but not females, in poor condition were more likely to exhibit respiratory illness. Poor muscle mass was associated acutely with death in males, but it did not predict future mortality in either sex. While there may be some reasons to suspect biological differences in the susceptibility to frailty in chimpanzees versus humans, our data are consistent with recent reports from humans that lean, physically active individuals can successfully combat frailty.</p>
Data from: Social selectivity in aging wild chimpanzees
<p>Humans prioritize close, positive relationships during aging, and socioemotional selectivity theory proposes that this shift causally depend on capacities for thinking about personal future time horizons. To examine this theory, we tested for key elements of human social aging in longitudinal data on wild chimpanzees. Aging male chimpanzees have more mutual friendships characterized by high, equitable investment, whereas younger males have more one-sided relationships. Older males are more likely to be alone, but they also socialize more with important social partners. Further, males show a relative shift from more agonistic interactions to more positive, affiliative interactions over their life span. Our findings indicate that social selectivity can emerge in the absence of complex future-oriented cognition, and they provide an evolutionary context for patterns of social aging in humans.</p>
Wild chimpanzees exhibit human-like aging of glucocorticoid regulation
<p><span>Cortisol, a key product of the stress response, has critical influences on degenerative aging in humans. In turn, cortisol production is affected by senescence of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, leading to progressive dysregulation and increased cortisol exposure. These processes have been studied extensively in industrialized settings, but few comparative data are available from humans and closely-related species living in natural environments, where stressors are very different. Here, we examine age-related changes in urinary cortisol in a 20-year longitudinal study of wild chimpanzees (N = 59 adults) in the Kanyawara community of Kibale National Park, Uganda. We tested for three key features of HPA aging identified in many human studies: increased average levels, a blunted diurnal rhythm, and enhanced response to stressors. Using linear mixed models, we found that aging was associated with a blunting of the diurnal rhythm and a significant linear increase in cortisol, even after controlling for changes in dominance rank. These effects did not differ by sex. Aging did not increase sensitivity to energetic stress or social status. Female chimpanzees experienced their highest levels of cortisol during cycling (versus lactation), and this effect increased with age. Male chimpanzees experienced their highest levels when exposed to sexually-attractive females, but this effect was diminished by age. Our results indicate that chimpanzees share some key features of HPA aging with humans. These findings suggest that impairments of HPA regulation are intrinsic to the aging process in hominids and are neither side effects of extended human lifespan nor of atypical environments.</span></p>
Listening and watching: do camera traps or acoustic sensors more efficiently detect wild chimpanzees in an open habitat?
<p>1. With one million animal species at risk of extinction, there is an urgent need to regularly monitor threatened species. However, in practice this is challenging, especially with wide-ranging, elusive and cryptic species or those that occur at low density.<br> 2. Here we compare two non-invasive methods, passive acoustic monitoring (n=12) and camera trapping (n=53), to detect chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) in a savanna-woodland mosaic habitat at the Issa Valley, Tanzania. With occupancy modelling we evaluate the efficacy of each method, using the estimated number of sampling days needed to establish chimpanzee absence with 95% probability, as our measure of efficacy.<br> 3. Passive acoustic monitoring was more efficient than camera trapping in detecting wild chimpanzees. Detectability varied over seasons, likely due to social and ecological factors that influence party size and vocalization rate. The acoustic method can infer chimpanzee absence with less than ten days of recordings in the field during the late dry season, the period of highest detectability, which was five times faster than the visual method.<br> 4. Synthesis and applications: Despite some technical limitations, we demonstrate that passive acoustic monitoring is a powerful tool for species monitoring. Its applicability in evaluating presence/absence, especially but not exclusively for loud call species, such as cetaceans, elephants, gibbons or chimpanzees provides a more efficient way of monitoring populations and inform conservation plans to mediate species-loss.</p>
Data from: CHIIMP: an automated high-throughput microsatellite genotyping approach reveals greater allelic diversity in wild chimpanzees
Short tandem repeats (STRs), also known as microsatellites, are commonly used to non-invasively genotype wild-living endangered species, including African apes. Until recently, capillary electrophoresis has been the method of choice to determine the length of polymorphic STR loci. However, this technique is labor intensive, difficult to compare across platforms, and notoriously imprecise. Here we developed a MiSeq-based approach and tested its performance using previously genotyped fecal samples from long-term studied chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania. Using data from eight microsatellite loci as a reference, we designed a bioinformatics platform that converts raw MiSeq reads into locus-specific files and automatically calls alleles after filtering stutter sequences and other PCR artifacts. Applying this method to the entire Gombe population, we confirmed previously reported genotypes, but also identified 31 new alleles that had been missed due to sequence differences and size homoplasy. The new genotypes, which increased the allelic diversity and heterozygosity in Gombe by 61% and 8%, respectively, were validated by replicate amplification and pedigree analyses. This demonstrated inheritance and resolved one case of an ambiguous paternity. Using both singleplex and multiplex locus amplification, we also genotyped fecal samples from chimpanzees in the Greater Mahale Ecosystem in Tanzania, demonstrating the utility of the MiSeq-based approach for genotyping non-habituated populations and performing comparative analyses across field sites. The new automated high-throughput analysis platform (available at https://github.com/ShawHahnLab/chiimp) will allow biologists to more accurately and effectively determine wildlife population size and structure, and thus obtain information critical for conservation efforts.
Data from: CHIIMP: an automated high-throughput microsatellite genotyping approach reveals greater allelic diversity in wild chimpanzees
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Listening and watching: do camera traps or acoustic sensors more efficiently detect wild chimpanzees in an open habitat?
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) use tools to access out of reach water
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Wild chimpanzees exhibit human-like aging of glucocorticoid regulation
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data from: Social selectivity in aging wild chimpanzees
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Data for: Evaluating the impact of physical frailty during ageing in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)
Open the record for dataset details and reuse information.
Information transfer efficiency differs in wild chimpanzees and bonobos, but not social-cognition
Several theories have been generated to understand the socio-cognitive mechanisms underlying the unique cooperative abilities of humans. The "interdependence hypothesis" posits that the cognitive dimension of human cooperation evolved in contexts when several individuals needed to collaborate to achieve a common goal and that more interdependent individuals are more likely to cooperate (provide services to conspecifics) in non-collaborative contexts. Alternatively, the "social tolerance hypothesis" proposes that higher social tolerance allows conspecifics to cooperate more efficiently and with a wider range of partners. We conducted the first field experimental evaluation of both hypotheses in our closest living relatives by contrasting chimpanzees to the less interdependent but more tolerant bonobos. We compared each species' performance during a non-collaborative cooperative task: informing conspecifics about a danger. We presented Gaboon viper models to 82 individuals from 5 wild communities. Chimpanzees arriving late at the snake were significantly more likely to have heard a call and less likely to startle, indicating that chimpanzees were better informed about the presence of the threat than bonobos. This stems from clear species differences in how individuals adjusted their calling decisions to the level of information already available. Chimpanzees were more likely to call and produced more alarm calls when they had not yet heard a call, whereas bonobos did so when they already heard a call. Our results confirm the link between interdependence and cooperation performance. These species differences were most likely driven by differences in motivation rather than in cognitive capacities since both species tended to consider audience knowledge in their decision to call. Our results inform theories on the evolution of human cooperation by linking inter-group competition pressure and in-group cooperative motivation and/or capability.
Data from: Demography, life history trade-offs, and the gastrointestinal virome of wild chimpanzees
<p>In humans, senescence increases susceptibility to viral infection. However, comparative data on viral infection in free-living non-human primates—even in our closest living relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos (<i>Pan troglodytes</i> and <i>P. paniscus</i>)—are relatively scarce, thereby constraining an evolutionary understanding of age-related patterns of viral infection. We investigated a population of wild eastern chimpanzees (<i>P. t. schweinfurthii</i>), using metagenomics to characterize viromes (full viral communities) in the feces of 42 sexually mature chimpanzees (22 males, 20 females) from the Kanyawara and Ngogo communities in Kibale National Park, Uganda. We identified 12 viruses from at least four families with genomes of both single-stranded RNA and single-stranded DNA. Although fecal viromes of both sexes varied with chimpanzee age, viral richness increased with age in males but not in females. This effect was largely due to three viruses, salivirus, porprismacovirus, and chimpanzee stool-associated RNA virus (chisavirus), which occurred more frequently in samples from older males. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that selection on males for early-life reproduction compromises investment in somatic maintenance, which has delayed consequences for health later in life, in this case reflected in viral infection and/or shedding. Fecal viromes may be useful for studying processes related to the divergent reproductive strategies of males and females, aging, and sex differences in longevity.</p>
Data from: Healthy cardiovascular biomarkers across the lifespan in wild-born chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
<p>Chimpanzees (<em>Pan troglodytes</em>) are a crucial model for understanding the evolution of human health and longevity. Cardiovascular disease is a major source of mortality during ageing in humans and therefore a key issue for comparative research. Current data indicate that compared to humans, chimpanzees have proatherogenic blood lipid profiles, an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease in humans. However, most work to date on chimpanzee lipids come from laboratory-living populations where lifestyles diverge from a wild context. Here, we examined cardiovascular profiles in chimpanzees living in African sanctuaries, who semi-free-range in large forested enclosures, consume a naturalistic diet, and generally experience conditions more similar to a wild chimpanzee lifestyle. We measured blood lipids, body weight and body fat in 75 sanctuary chimpanzees and compared them to publicly available data from laboratory-living chimpanzees from the Primate Ageing Database. We found that semi-free-ranging chimpanzees exhibited lower body weight and lower levels of lipids that are risk factors for human cardiovascular disease, and that some of these disparities increased with age. Our findings support the hypothesis that lifestyle can shape health indices in chimpanzees, similar to effects observed across human populations, and contribute to an emerging understanding of human cardiovascular health in evolutionary context.</p>
Data from: Social network analysis shows direct evidence for social transmission of tool use in wild chimpanzees.
Claims of culture in animals have been stimulated by studies on a wide range of taxa revealing group-specific behavior patterns that remain stable through generations, consistent with different behavioral innovations spreading within groups by social transmission in a manner similar to human culture. In chimpanzees, 39 behaviors have been identified as 'cultural', because alternative genetic and environmental explanations for the observed regional variation appear less plausible. This interpretation is supported by experimental data from captive chimpanzee groups. However, there is no experimental evidence for social learning in the wild, nor has there been direct observation of social diffusion of spontaneously occurring behavioral innovations. Here, we document the spread of two novel tool-use variants, 'moss-sponging' and 'leaf-sponge re-use', in the Sonso chimpanzee community of Budongo Forest, Uganda. We use traditional network-based diffusion analysis (NBDA) to test whether these novel behaviors spread by social learning, as well as a newly developed dynamic version of NBDA, capable of capturing temporal aspects of acquisition, i.e. how each successive personal observations impact the subsequent acquisition of behavior. Both models provide strong evidence that diffusion patterns of moss-sponging, but not leaf-sponge re-use, are significantly better explained by social than asocial learning, therefore showing that wild chimpanzees socially learned moss-sponging from each other. The most conservative estimate of social transmission accounts for 85% of observed events with an estimated 11-fold increase in learning rate for each time a novice observed an informed individual performing moss-sponging. We conclude that group-specific behavioral variants in chimpanzees can be socially learned, suggesting this prerequisite for culture originated in a common ancestor of great apes and humans, long before the advent of modern humans.
Data from: Limited evidence for third party affiliation during development in wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii)
Examining the ontogeny of conflict-mitigating behaviors in our closest living relatives is an important component of understanding the evolutionary origins of cooperation in our species. In this study, we used 26 years of data to investigate the emergence of third party affiliation (TPA), defined as affiliative contact given to recipients of aggression by uninvolved bystanders (regardless of initiation), in wild immature eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) of Gombe National Park, Tanzania. We also characterized TPA by mothers in the same dataset as an adult benchmark for interpreting immature TPA patterns. In summary, we found that immatures did not express TPA as measured by grooming between the ages of 1.5 - 12.0 years and that there was limited evidence that immatures expressed TPA via play. We also found that mothers did express TPA to offspring, although mothers did not show TPA towards non-offspring. Cases of TPA by mothers to other adults were too few to analyze separately. These results contrast with findings from captive studies which found that chimpanzees as young as 6 years of age demonstrated TPA. We argue that within-species variation in the expression of TPA, both in immatures and adulthood, provides evidence that the conflict management behaviors of young chimpanzees may be heavily influenced by social, ecological, and demographic factors.
ScienceDex guides
Understand access before you commit
These curated guides explain access requirements, typical timelines, costs, and reuse considerations for widely used research datasets.
Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.