TY - JOUR
T1 - Gregariousness is associated with parasite species richness in a community of wild chimpanzees
AU - Deere, Jessica R.
AU - Schaber, Kathryn L.
AU - Foerster, Steffen
AU - Gilby, Ian C.
AU - Feldblum, Joseph T.
AU - VanderWaal, Kimberly
AU - Wolf, Tiffany M.
AU - Travis, Dominic A.
AU - Raphael, Jane
AU - Lipende, Iddi
AU - Mjungu, Deus
AU - Pusey, Anne E.
AU - Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V.
AU - Gillespie, Thomas R.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.
PY - 2021/5
Y1 - 2021/5
N2 - Increased risk of pathogen transmission through proximity and contact is a well-documented cost of sociality. Affiliative social contact, however, is an integral part of primate group life and can benefit health. Despite its importance to the evolution and maintenance of sociality, the tradeoff between costs and benefits of social contact for group-living primate species remains poorly understood. To improve our understanding of this interplay, we used social network analysis to investigate whether contact via association in the same space and/or physical contact measured through grooming were associated with helminth parasite species richness in a community of wild chimpanzees (
Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii). We identified parasite taxa in 381 fecal samples from 36 individuals from the Kasekela community of chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, from November 1, 2006 - October 31, 2012. Over the study period, eight environmentally transmitted helminth taxa were identified. We quantified three network metrics for association and grooming contact, including degree strength, betweenness, and closeness. Our findings suggest that more gregarious individuals - those who spent more time with more individuals in the same space - had higher parasite richness, while the connections in the grooming network were not related to parasite richness. The expected parasite richness in individuals increased by 1.13 taxa (CI: 1.04, 1.22; p = 0.02) per one standard deviation increase in degree strength of association contact. The results of this study add to the understanding of the role that different types of social contact plays in the parasite richness of group-living social primates.
AB - Increased risk of pathogen transmission through proximity and contact is a well-documented cost of sociality. Affiliative social contact, however, is an integral part of primate group life and can benefit health. Despite its importance to the evolution and maintenance of sociality, the tradeoff between costs and benefits of social contact for group-living primate species remains poorly understood. To improve our understanding of this interplay, we used social network analysis to investigate whether contact via association in the same space and/or physical contact measured through grooming were associated with helminth parasite species richness in a community of wild chimpanzees (
Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii). We identified parasite taxa in 381 fecal samples from 36 individuals from the Kasekela community of chimpanzees in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, from November 1, 2006 - October 31, 2012. Over the study period, eight environmentally transmitted helminth taxa were identified. We quantified three network metrics for association and grooming contact, including degree strength, betweenness, and closeness. Our findings suggest that more gregarious individuals - those who spent more time with more individuals in the same space - had higher parasite richness, while the connections in the grooming network were not related to parasite richness. The expected parasite richness in individuals increased by 1.13 taxa (CI: 1.04, 1.22; p = 0.02) per one standard deviation increase in degree strength of association contact. The results of this study add to the understanding of the role that different types of social contact plays in the parasite richness of group-living social primates.
KW - Apes
KW - Contact networks
KW - Fission–fusion social structure
KW - Parasitology
KW - Social network analysis
KW - Sociality
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UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85105141021&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s00265-021-03030-3
DO - 10.1007/s00265-021-03030-3
M3 - Article
C2 - 34456452
AN - SCOPUS:85105141021
SN - 0340-5443
VL - 75
JO - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
JF - Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology
IS - 5
M1 - 87
ER -