conservation

National Geographic has an excellent article by David Quammen about the science of bonobo behavior: "The Left Bank Ape: An Exclusive Look at Bonobo Behavior". Much has been made of the contrast between chimpanzee and bonobo behavior, often centered around the question of which of these two closest human relatives might be the better model for hominin origins. In reality, the Anthro 101 version of bonobo behavior radically oversimplifies their behavioral variation. As Quammen discusses, bonobo behavior in the wild holds some surprises for students enamored of the simplistic sex primate story.

That afternoon Hohmann and I sat beneath one of the thatch roofs discussing bonobo behavior. Few other researchers have seen bonobos in the act of predation, and those few reports generally involve small prey such as anomalures (only at Wamba) or baby duikers. Animal protein, insofar as bonobos get any, had seemed to come mainly from insects and millipedes. But Fruth and Hohmann reported nine cases of hunting by bonobos at Lomako, seven of which involved sizable duikers, usually grabbed by one bonobo, ripped apart at the belly while still alive, with the entrails eaten first, and the meat shared. More recently, here at Lui Kotale, they have seen another 21 successful predations, among which eight of the victims were mature duikers, one was a bush baby, and three were monkeys. Bonobos preying on other primates: “This is a regular part of the bonobo diet,” Hohmann said.

Sexiness, on the other hand, seemed to him less manifest than others, such as de Waal, had claimed. “I could show Frans some of the behaviors that he would not think are possible in bonobos,” Hohmann said. Infrequent sex, for instance. Yes, there’s a great diversity of sexual acts in the bonobo repertoire, but “a captive setting really amplifies all these behaviors. Bonobo behavior in the wild is different—must be different—because bonobos are very busy making their living, searching for food.”

Understanding the behavioral flexibility of both bonobos and chimpanzees is hugely important to the science of human origins. Meanwhile the continuing habitat loss and bushmeat trade threaten these creatures survival. Bonobo numbers remain fewer than 20,000 today. Their present genetic diversity is more comparable to the pattern of human variation than are chimpanzees, gorillas or orangutans. In that respect, at least, they may be the best primate model for our recent evolution. Hopefully genomics will begin to yield insights about the basis of bonobo-chimpanzee behavioral variation, which might open new doors to understand the evolution of the human brain.

The New York Times has a long article today about the progressive loss of pheasant habitat in Iowa, and the resulting negative impact on the hunting industry in that state ("As Pheasants Disappear, Hunters in Iowa Follow"). The problems described there are more widespread than Iowa, and they derive in large part from government policy.

The overall amount of land enrolled in the Agriculture Department’s Conservation Reserve Program has dipped to 29.5 million acres from a peak of 36.7 million in 2007. Under the program, the government pays owners a certain rate to plant parts of their land with grass and other vegetation that create a wildlife habitat. Land in the program is most suitable for pheasants and other upland game, and owners often make it available for hunting. But as the price of corn and other crops has risen, so have land values, and the rates paid by the government under the program have been unable to keep up.

The article never mentions that the primary reason for increases in the price of corn is government subsidies and incentives for ethanol production. In other words, one government payout is working to destroy habitat while another government program is trying to preserve it. In the last few years, the net effect of government intervention has favored plowing over conservation.

Donald McNeil, Jr., has written up some background detail about last week's story that falciparum malaria came from gorillas: "A finding on malaria comes from humble origins". It's one of many research findings coming out of a systematic collection of fecal samples from African ape field projects:

Dr. Hahn, a virologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, is an expert not in malaria but in S.I.V., or simian immunodeficiency virus, the precursor to the virus that causes AIDS in humans. But she has made deals with primate researchers all across Africa who collect fecal samples for their own projects, to have them take extras for her.

They go into vials with a special solution, called RNAlater, that preserves the nucleic acids of all the cells in the sample — which includes not only what apes eat, but cells sloughed off their gut linings, which contain all the things infecting them. She has systematically sequenced the genes of many of those infective agents: S.I.V., simian foamy virus, hepatitis and now malaria parasites.

Poop metagenomics. I wonder to what extent pathogens in meat may pass through the gut with DNA intact. Probably not a big issue with African apes, as meat consumption is fairly sporadic even in chimpanzees. But you'd want to be cautious doing certain things with carnivores.

The Observer has a nice article describing the "Frozen Zoo" of samples kept by the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research.

Dr Oliver Ryder, the geneticist who heads the Frozen Zoo programme, welcomes the news of Loring's work, which itself built on a breakthrough in 2007 by Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka. For Ryder it is confirmation that the zoo's founding as a sort of "bet" on the science of the future now has great prospects of paying off. "We wondered if one day pigs would fly. Well, now pigs are flying. I am very excited by the results," Ryder says.

The impetus for the article is work that has induced pluripotent stem cells from skin samples held by the zoo. Of course they're talking about the potential for cloning whole animals, which with a sample of more than 8000 individuals from many species is quite something. It would be worth archiving many more samples from wild individuals -- even fecal samples might be sufficient in the future.