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Environmental education research methods often focus on measuring changes in people’s attitudes toward conservation. While attitudes are an important indicator of change, it is critical to target incentivised behaviour because conservation efforts often involve behavioural changes that are costly to one’s self (e.g., reducing water use, purchasing pricier alternatives). In the present study, we measured both attitudes and behaviours in a short-term conservation education program near the primate-rich Kibale National Forest in Western Uganda. Adolescents ( N = 59) participated in a three-hour curriculum over three weeks integrated into an after-school wildlife club. After almost 30 years of successful primate conservation education in this region, we chose a novel taxonomic group (bats) for this study. Our pre-registered study had two conditions: an experimental condition, in which students learned about bats as an important local pollinator species, and a control condition, in which students learned about the moon. Only the experimental condition emphasised conservation’s delayed benefits. We compared attitudes, knowledge, and behaviours pre- and post- curriculum. To capture behaviour, we employed an investment task in which participants could invest their own resources in a ‘fund’ to support work relating to bats or the moon, depending on condition. Across both conditions, participants showed positive shifts in attitudes and knowledge from pre- to post-measures and showed increased investments in bat- and moon-related funds. These findings reveal that short-term conservation education influences adolescents’ investment decisions as well as their attitudes and knowledge. Our method can easily be edited for conservation education of any species including endangered primates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developmental studies of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) at Gombe argue that sex differences in adult sociality may be rooted in mothers adjusting their social strategies when they have sons versus daughters. Though early life social experience has important effects on social behavior later life, underlying sex differences in attention to and modeling of social interactions could exacerbate differential social exposure to encourage diverging social strategies during development. If so, adult social patterns should be reflected in immatures' attentional sensitivity to social interactions. Since adult male chimpanzees groom peers more often than females, young males should spend more time watching neighbors' grooming bouts and be more likely than females to begin grooming bouts immediately following exposure. To test this, we video-recorded chimpanzees under 10 y.o. at Kanyawara (n=24) in Kibale National Park, Uganda, for two minutes immediately following the start of grooming bouts between their nearest neighbors. We then scored the amount of time that immatures spent watching (TSW) grooming bouts and whether that immature groomed a partner after watching. TSW increased with age (GLMM, Int=23.61, βage=1.998, p=0.01) but there was no sex difference in TSW (p=0.39). However, males were inherently more likely begin grooming a partner immediately following exposure (logistic regression, Int=-3.39, p<0.01; βsex=4.09, p=0.03) and, further, males that watched longer were especially likely to begin grooming (βsex*tsw=0.08, p=0.03). This supports the conclusion that underlying differences in attentional sensitivity may amplify the effects of differential exposure to shape the development of sex-typed social strategies in wild chimpanzees. This project supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Nacey P. Maggioncalda Foundation, American Philosophical Society, and the Leakey Foundation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-term primate field research programs contribute to the protection of endangered primate species and their vanishing habitats by informing and fostering local and international conservation programs. The Kibale Chimpanzee Project (KCP) has studied the Kanyawara community of wild chimpanzees continuously since 1987, investigating a wide range of behavioral, ecological, and physiological questions. The study area includes the northwest boundary of Kibale National Park, Uganda, and has experienced habitat change driven by multiple causes, including forest regeneration, an increasingly warmer and wetter climate, and impacts from the neighboring human population. Here, we review the history of research on Kanyawara chimpanzees and examine how their demography, diet, and social behavior have changed over the last 30+ years. While Kanyawara chimpanzees were protected from the major threats of poaching and habitat loss, respiratory diseases of human origin were a major source of mortality. Many individuals were also injured by wire hunting snares. Nevertheless, the study community has grown modestly in size, individuals have become increasingly gregarious, and birth rates have increased. These results are likely attributable to improved habitat productivity that can be traced to decades-long efforts by wildlife authorities and the associated research and conservation programs in Kibale. Overall, research has contributed both to understanding interactions among nutritional ecology, social behavior, physiology, and health of an endangered species, and also to conservation activities in the Kibale community through direct interventions, positive economic impacts, and conservation education programs., Competing Interests: Conflicts of interest The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

While declining physical performance is an expected consequence of ageing, 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 found 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. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution of the primate ageing process'.

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 ( Pan troglodytes and P. paniscus )-are relatively scarce, thereby constraining an evolutionary understanding of age-related patterns of viral infection. We investigated a population of wild eastern chimpanzees ( P. t. schweinfurthii ), using metagenomics to characterize viromes (full viral communities) in the faeces of 42 sexually mature chimpanzees (22 males, 20 females) from the Kanyawara and Ngogo communities of Kibale National Park, Uganda. We identified 12 viruses from at least four viral families possessing genomes of both single-stranded RNA and single-stranded DNA. Faecal viromes of both sexes varied with chimpanzee age, but viral richness increased with age only in males. This effect was largely due to three viruses, salivirus, porprismacovirus and chimpanzee stool-associated RNA virus (chisavirus), which occurred most 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. Faecal viromes are therefore useful for studying processes related to the divergent reproductive strategies of males and females, ageing, and sex differences in longevity. This article is part of the theme issue 'Evolution of the primate ageing process'.