A new approach to geostatistical synthesis of historical records reveals capuchin spatial responses to climate and demographic change.

Recent proliferation of GPS technology has transformed animal movement research. Yet, time-series data from this recent technology rarely span beyond a decade, constraining longitudinal research. Long-term field sites hold valuable historic animal location records, including hand-drawn maps and semantic descriptions. Here, we introduce a generalised workflow for converting such records into reliable location data to estimate home ranges, using 30 years of sleep-site data from 11 white-faced capuchin (Cebus imitator) groups in Costa Rica. Our findings illustrate that historic sleep locations can reliably recover home range size and geometry. We showcase the opportunity our approach presents to resolve open questions that can only be addressed with very long-term data, examining how home ranges are affected by climate cycles and demographic change. We urge researchers to translate historical records into usable movement data before this knowledge is lost; it is essential to understanding how animals are responding to our changing world.

Mother of all bonds: Influences on spatial association across the lifespan in capuchins.

In humans, being more socially integrated is associated with better physical and mental health and/or with lower mortality. This link between sociality and health may have ancient roots: sociality also predicts survival or reproduction in other mammals, such as rats, dolphins, and non-human primates. A key question, therefore, is which factors influence the degree of sociality over the life course. Longitudinal data can provide valuable insight into how environmental variability drives individual differences in sociality and associated outcomes. The first year of life-when long-lived mammals are the most reliant on others for nourishment and protection-is likely to play an important role in how individuals learn to integrate into groups. Using behavioral, demographic, and pedigree information on 376 wild capuchin monkeys (Cebus imitator) across 20 years, we address how changes in group composition influence spatial association. We further try to determine the extent to which early maternal social environments have downstream effects on sociality across the juvenile and (sub)adult stages. We find a positive effect of early maternal spatial association, where female infants whose mothers spent more time around others also later spent more time around others as juveniles and subadults. Our results also highlight the importance of kin availability and other aspects of group composition (e.g., group size) in dynamically influencing spatial association across developmental stages. We bring attention to the importance of-and difficulty in-determining the social versus genetic influences that parents have on offspring phenotypes. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Having more maternal kin (mother and siblings) is associated with spending more time near others across developmental stages in both male and female capuchins. Having more offspring as a subadult or adult female is additionally associated with spending more time near others. A mother's average sociality (time near others) is predictive of how social her daughters (but not sons) become as juveniles and subadults (a between-mother effect). Additional variation within sibling sets in this same maternal phenotype is not predictive of how social they become later relative to each other (no within-mother effect).

Evidence-based practice confidence and behavior throughout the curriculum of four physical therapy education programs: a longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND: Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a foundational process taught in health professional education, yet it is unclear when EBP confidence and skills are obtained. Increases in EBP confidence and behaviors from the start of physical therapy programs to post graduation have been reported in studies that evaluated a single program or used non-valid questionnaires. This study aimed to describe changes in EBP confidence and behavior using validated questionnaires of students from four physical therapy education programs throughout their curriculum and one year post graduation. METHODS: One hundred and eighty-one students from a potential pool of 269 (67.3%) consented to participate. Students completed the Evidence-Based Practice Confidence (EPIC) Scale and the Evidence-Based Practice Implementation Scale (EBPIS) at 6 timepoints: start of the program, prior to first clinical experience, after first clinical experience, at the end of classroom instruction, graduation, and one year post. Medians (Mdn) and 25th and 75th percentiles (P25, P75) were calculated for 42 (23.2%) students with complete data across all timepoints. Change between timepoints was assessed using Friedman's test and Wilcoxon signed rank test with a Bonferroni correction for post hoc analysis. RESULTS: There were significant changes in EPIC scores (p < 0.001) from enrollment (Mdn 50.0, P25, P75 35.5, 65.9) to prior to first clinical experience (Mdn 65.5, P25, P75 57.3, 72.5) and after the first clinical experience (Mdn 67.3, P25, P75, 58.9, 73.2) to the end of classroom instruction (Mdn 78.6, P25, P75, 72.0, 84.1). Significant increases on the EBPIS (p < 0.01) were only seen from after the first year of training (Mdn 15, P25, P75, 10.0, 22.5) to end of the first clinical experience (Mdn 21.5, P25, P75 12.0, 32.0). CONCLUSIONS: EBP confidence increased significantly after classroom instruction but remained the same after clinical experiences and at one year post graduation. EBP behavior significantly increased only after the first clinical experience and remained the same through graduation. Confidence and behavior scores were higher than were previously reported in practicing professionals. Ongoing assessment of EBP confidence and behavior may help instructors build appropriate curricula to achieve their outlined EBP objectives.

The SunBEAm birth cohort: Protocol design.

Background: Food allergy (FA) and atopic dermatitis (AD) are common conditions that often present in the first year of life. Identification of underlying mechanisms and environmental determinants of FA and AD is essential to develop and implement effective prevention and treatment strategies. Objectives: We sought to describe the design of the Systems Biology of Early Atopy (SunBEAm) birth cohort. Methods: Funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and administered through the Consortium for Food Allergy Research (CoFAR), SunBEAm is a US population-based, multicenter birth cohort that enrolls pregnant mothers, fathers, and their newborns and follows them to 3 years. Questionnaire and biosampling strategies were developed to apply a systems biology approach to identify environmental, immunologic, and multiomic determinants of AD, FA, and other allergic outcomes. Results: Enrollment is currently underway. On the basis of an estimated FA prevalence of 6%, the enrollment goal is 2500 infants. AD is defined on the basis of questionnaire and assessment, and FA is defined by an algorithm combining history and testing. Although any FA will be recorded, we focus on the diagnosis of egg, milk, and peanut at 5 months, adding wheat, soy, cashew, hazelnut, walnut, codfish, shrimp, and sesame starting at 12 months. Sampling includes blood, hair, stool, dust, water, tape strips, skin swabs, nasal secretions, nasal swabs, saliva, urine, functional aspects of the skin, and maternal breast milk and vaginal swabs. Conclusions: The SunBEAm birth cohort will provide a rich repository of data and specimens to interrogate mechanisms and determinants of early allergic outcomes, with an emphasis on FA, AD, and systems biology.

Reproductive inequality in humans and other mammals.

To address claims of human exceptionalism, we determine where humans fit within the greater mammalian distribution of reproductive inequality. We show that humans exhibit lower reproductive skew (i.e., inequality in the number of surviving offspring) among males and smaller sex differences in reproductive skew than most other mammals, while nevertheless falling within the mammalian range. Additionally, female reproductive skew is higher in polygynous human populations than in polygynous nonhumans mammals on average. This patterning of skew can be attributed in part to the prevalence of monogamy in humans compared to the predominance of polygyny in nonhuman mammals, to the limited degree of polygyny in the human societies that practice it, and to the importance of unequally held rival resources to women's fitness. The muted reproductive inequality observed in humans appears to be linked to several unusual characteristics of our species-including high levels of cooperation among males, high dependence on unequally held rival resources, complementarities between maternal and paternal investment, as well as social and legal institutions that enforce monogamous norms.

Genetic, maternal, and environmental influences on sociality in a pedigreed primate population.

Various aspects of sociality in mammals (e.g., dyadic connectedness) are linked with measures of biological fitness (e.g., longevity). How within- and between-individual variation in relevant social traits arises in uncontrolled wild populations is challenging to determine but is crucial for understanding constraints on the evolution of sociality. We use an advanced statistical method, known as the 'animal model', which incorporates pedigree information, to look at social, genetic, and environmental influences on sociality in a long-lived wild primate. We leverage a longitudinal database spanning 20 years of observation on individually recognized white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus imitator), with a multi-generational pedigree. We analyze two measures of spatial association, using repeat sampling of 376 individuals (mean: 53.5 months per subject, range: 6-185 months per subject). Conditioned on the effects of age, sex, group size, seasonality, and El Niño-Southern Oscillation phases, we show low to moderate long-term repeatability (across years) of the proportion of time spent social (posterior mode [95% Highest Posterior Density interval]: 0.207 [0.169, 0.265]) and of average number of partners (0.144 [0.113, 0.181]) (latent scale). Most of this long-term repeatability could be explained by modest heritability (h2social: 0.152 [0.094, 0.207]; h2partners: 0.113 [0.076, 0.149]) with small long-term maternal effects (m2social: 0.000 [0.000, 0.045]; m2partners: 0.000 [0.000, 0.041]). Our models capture the majority of variance in our behavioral traits, with much of the variance explained by temporally changing factors, such as group of residence, highlighting potential limits to the evolvability of our trait due to social and environmental constraints.

The development of sex differences in play in wild white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus).

Many mammalian species display sex differences in the frequency of play behavior, yet the animal literature includes few longitudinal studies of play, which are important for understanding the developmental timing of sex differences and the evolutionary functions of play. We analyzed social play, solitary play, and grooming using an 18-year data set on 38 wild white-faced capuchin monkeys (Cebus capucinus) followed since infancy. Rates of each behavior were measured as the proportion of point samples taken during focal follows in which the individual engaged in each behavior. To determine sex differences in these rates, we ran a series of generalized linear mixed models, considering both linear and quadratic effects of age, and chose the optimal model for each of the three behavioral outcomes based on information criteria. Rates of both social play and solitary play decreased with age, with the exception of social play in males, which increased in the early juvenile period before decreasing. Male and female capuchins had different developmental patterns of social play, with males playing more than females during most of the juvenile period, but they did not display meaningful sex differences in solitary play rates. Additionally, males and females had different patterns of grooming over the lifespan: males participated in grooming at low rates throughout their lives, while adult females participated in grooming at much higher rates, peaking around age 11 years before declining. We suggest that male and female white-faced capuchins may adopt alternative social bonding strategies, including different developmental timing and different behaviors (social play for males vs. grooming for females). Our results were consistent with two functional hypotheses of play, the practice and bonding hypotheses. This study demonstrates that play behavior may be critical for the development of sex-specific social strategies and emphasizes the importance of developmental perspectives on social behaviors.

Using an on-site laboratory for fecal steroid analysis in wild white-faced capuchins.

Hormone laboratories located "on-site" where field studies are being conducted have a number of advantages. On-site laboratories allow hormone analyses to proceed in near-real-time, minimize logistics of sample permits/shipping, contribute to in-country capacity-building, and (our focus here) facilitate cross-site collaboration through shared methods and a shared laboratory. Here we provide proof-of-concept that an on-site hormone laboratory (the Taboga Field Laboratory, located in the Taboga Forest Reserve, Costa Rica) can successfully run endocrine analyses in a remote location. Using fecal samples from wild white-faced capuchins (Cebus imitator) from three Costa Rican forests, we validate the extraction and analysis of four steroid hormones (glucocorticoids, testosterone, estradiol, progesterone) across six assays (DetectX® and ISWE, all from Arbor Assays). Additionally, as the first collaboration across three long-term, wild capuchin field sites (Lomas Barbudal, Santa Rosa, Taboga) involving local Costa Rican collaborators, this laboratory can serve as a future hub for collaborative exchange.

Social integration predicts survival in female white-faced capuchin monkeys.

Across multiple species of social mammals, a growing number of studies have found that individual sociality is associated with survival. In long-lived species, like primates, lifespan is one of the main components of fitness. We used 18 years of data from the Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project to quantify social integration in 11 capuchin (Cebus capucinus) groups and tested whether female survivorship was associated with females' tendencies to interact with three types of partners: (1) all group members, (2) adult females, and (3) adult males. We found strong evidence that females who engaged more with other females in affiliative interactions and foraged in close proximity experienced increased survivorship. We found some weak evidence that females might also benefit from engaging in more support in agonistic contexts with other females. These benefits were evident in models that account for the females' rank and group size. Female interactions with all group members also increased survival, but the estimates of the effects were more uncertain. In interactions with adult males, only females who provided more grooming to males survived longer. The results presented here suggest that social integration may result in survival-related benefits. Females might enjoy these benefits through exchanging grooming for other currencies, such as coalitionary support or tolerance.

Are demographic correlates of white-faced capuchin monkey (Cebus capucinus) "Gargle and Twargle" vocalization rates consistent with the infanticide risk assessment hypothesis?

Zahavi's "Bond Testing Hypothesis" states that irritating stimuli are used to elicit honest information from social partners regarding their attitudes towards the relationship. Two elements of the Cebus capucinus vocal repertoire, the "gargle" and "twargle," have been hypothesized to serve such a bond-testing function. The greatest threat to C. capucinus infant survival, and to adult female reproductive success, is infanticide perpetrated by alpha males. Thus, we predicted that infants (<8 months), pregnant females and females with infants would gargle/twargle at higher rates than the rest of the population, directing these vocalizations primarily to the alpha male. Over 16 years, researchers collected data via focal follows in 11 habituated groups of wild capuchins in Lomas Barbudal, Costa Rica. We found some support for our hypothesis. Infants and females with infants (<8 months) vocalized at higher rates than the rest of the population. Pregnant females did not vocalize at relatively high rates. Infants (age 8-23 months) were the only target group that vocalized more when the alpha male was not their father. Monkeys gargled and twargled most frequently towards the alpha male, who is both the perpetrator of infanticide and the most effective protector against potentially infanticidal males.

The long lives of primates and the 'invariant rate of ageing' hypothesis.

Is it possible to slow the rate of ageing, or do biological constraints limit its plasticity? We test the 'invariant rate of ageing' hypothesis, which posits that the rate of ageing is relatively fixed within species, with a collection of 39 human and nonhuman primate datasets across seven genera. We first recapitulate, in nonhuman primates, the highly regular relationship between life expectancy and lifespan equality seen in humans. We next demonstrate that variation in the rate of ageing within genera is orders of magnitude smaller than variation in pre-adult and age-independent mortality. Finally, we demonstrate that changes in the rate of ageing, but not other mortality parameters, produce striking, species-atypical changes in mortality patterns. Our results support the invariant rate of ageing hypothesis, implying biological constraints on how much the human rate of ageing can be slowed.

Not by transmission alone: the role of invention in cultural evolution.

Innovation-the combination of invention and social learning-can empower species to invade new niches via cultural adaptation. Social learning has typically been regarded as the fundamental driver for the emergence of traditions and thus culture. Consequently, invention has been relatively understudied outside the human lineage-despite being the source of new traditions. This neglect leaves basic questions unanswered: what factors promote the creation of new ideas and practices? What affects their spread or loss? We critically review the existing literature, focusing on four levels of investigation: traits (what sorts of behaviours are easiest to invent?), individuals (what factors make some individuals more likely to be inventors?), ecological contexts (what aspects of the environment make invention or transmission more likely?), and populations (what features of relationships and societies promote the rise and spread of new inventions?). We aim to inspire new research by highlighting theoretical and empirical gaps in the study of innovation, focusing primarily on inventions in non-humans. Understanding the role of invention and innovation in the history of life requires a well-developed theoretical framework (which embraces cognitive processes) and a taxonomically broad, cross-species dataset that explicitly investigates inventions and their transmission. We outline such an agenda here. This article is part of the theme issue 'Foundations of cultural evolution'.

Maternal death and offspring fitness in multiple wild primates.

Primate offspring often depend on their mothers well beyond the age of weaning, and offspring that experience maternal death in early life can suffer substantial reductions in fitness across the life span. Here, we leverage data from eight wild primate populations (seven species) to examine two underappreciated pathways linking early maternal death and offspring fitness that are distinct from direct effects of orphaning on offspring survival. First, we show that, for five of the seven species, offspring face reduced survival during the years immediately preceding maternal death, while the mother is still alive. Second, we identify an intergenerational effect of early maternal loss in three species (muriquis, baboons, and blue monkeys), such that early maternal death experienced in one generation leads to reduced offspring survival in the next. Our results have important implications for the evolution of slow life histories in primates, as they suggest that maternal condition and survival are more important for offspring fitness than previously realized.

Learning in Lockdown: Teaching Human Rights Practice During the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article explores the authors' university course on 'Human Rights and Digital Technology', designed to engage students in a holistic assessment of the application of international human rights law to the digital universe. In addition to the intellectual premises of our course, this article examines the notable shift in teaching practice during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, as the authors moved from classroom to online instruction. We argue that during the pandemic many students experienced the loss of equal access to higher education based on merit or capacity, a human right guaranteed by the Universal Declaration and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In fact, students recognized how online education, at least in this specific context, may have exacerbated social and economic differences. This article provides the analysis of a small survey of our students' perceptions of online learning in the middle of a global pandemic. Based on the authors' observations and survey results, our article points to three salient factors that affected the quality and fairness of online education during the lockdown period: the absence of in-person, experienced human feedback to hone critical thinking; access (or lack thereof) to functioning technology; and compromised student attention. We highlight several lessons learned from this experience, and how a human rights framework may help both professors and students identify the conditions under which online learning is more likely to be successful and to guarantee equal access to higher education.

Capuchin monkey rituals: an interdisciplinary study of form and function.

Many white-faced capuchin monkey dyads in Lomas Barbudal, Costa Rica, practise idiosyncratic interaction sequences that are not part of the species-typical behavioural repertoire. These interactions often include uncomfortable or risky elements. These interactions exhibit the following characteristics commonly featured in definitions of rituals in humans: (i) they involve an unusual intensity of focus on the partner, (ii) the behaviours have no immediate utilitarian purpose, (iii) they sometimes involve 'sacred objects', (iv) the distribution of these behaviours suggests that they are invented and spread via social learning, and (v) many behaviours in these rituals are repurposed from other behavioural domains (e.g. extractive foraging). However, in contrast with some definitions of ritual, capuchin rituals are not overly rigid in their form, nor do the sequences have specific opening and closing actions. In our 9260 h of observation, ritual performance rate was uncorrelated with amount of time dyads spent in proximity but (modestly) associated with higher relationship quality and rate of coalition formation across dyads. Our results suggest that capuchin rituals serve a bond-testing rather than a bond-strengthening function. Ritual interactions are exclusively dyadic, and between-dyad consistency in form is low, casting doubt on the alternative hypothesis that they enhance group-wide solidarity. This article is part of the theme issue 'Ritual renaissance: new insights into the most human of behaviours'.

Behavioural variation and learning across the lifespan in wild white-faced capuchin monkeys.

Natural selection has evidently mediated many species characteristics relevant to the evolution of learning, including longevity, length of the juvenile period, social organization, timing of cognitive and motor development, and age-related shifts in behavioural propensities such as activity level, flexibility in problem-solving and motivation to seek new information. Longitudinal studies of wild populations can document such changes in behavioural propensities, providing critical information about the contexts in which learning strategies develop, in environments similar to those in which learning strategies evolved. The Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project provides developmental data for the white-faced capuchin, Cebus capucinus, a species that has converged with humans regarding many life-history and behavioural characteristics. In this dataset, focused primarily on learned aspects of foraging behaviour, younger capuchins are more active overall, more curious and opportunistic, and more prone to inventing new investigative and foraging-related behaviours. Younger individuals more often seek social information by watching other foragers (especially older foragers). Younger individuals are more creative, playful and inventive, and less neophobic, exhibiting a wider range of behaviours when engaged in extractive foraging. Whereas adults more often stick with old solutions, younger individuals often incorporate recently acquired experience (both social and asocial) when foraging. This article is part of the theme issue 'Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals'.

Use of a fracture prevention screening algorithm predicts self-reported falls in postmenopausal women.

Background and Purpose: The prevention of falls and fall-related fractures following menopause is an important health initiative. The Fracture Prevention Screening Algorithm (FPSA) uniquely uses fracture risk to prompt fall risk assessment to classify both fall and fracture risk in individuals. The purpose of this study was to determine whether use of the FPSA accurately predicted self-reported falls in post-menopausal women over one year. Methods: 142 postmenopausal women were recruited. Based on Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX®) scores, women with a ≥3% 10-year probability of hip fracture (high risk), or who self-identified as having balance problems or a fall history, underwent the Functional Gait Assessment (FGA) to estimate fall risk (high risk = ≤22/30). This allowed classification on the FPSA into one of four risk categories: low fall/low fracture risk; low fall/high fracture risk; high fall/low fracture risk; high fall/high fracture risk. Participants were contacted monthly for one year to determine fall and injury occurrence. Results: Fall/injury surveillance was conducted with 136 subjects over one year. Compared to women in the low fall/low fracture risk group, both high fall risk groups demonstrated significantly greater fall rates. Falls were 81-89% more likely in women with FGA scores of 22/30 or less. All injuries were rare events across all risk strata and did not differ between risk groups. Conclusion: These findings support the use of fracture risk as a trigger for fall screening to comprehensively classify risk in post-menopausal women as proposed by the FPSA.

Efficacy and tolerability of anti-programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) antibody (Avelumab) treatment in advanced thymoma.

BACKGROUND: Thymic epithelial tumors are PD-L1-expressing tumors of thymic epithelial origin characterized by varying degrees of lymphocytic infiltration and a predisposition towards development of paraneoplastic autoimmunity. PD-1-targeting antibodies have been evaluated, largely in patients with thymic carcinoma. We sought to evaluate the efficacy and safety of the anti-PD-L1 antibody, avelumab (MSB0010718C), in patients with relapsed, advanced thymic epithelial tumors and conduct correlative immunological studies. METHODS: Seven patients with thymoma and one patient with thymic carcinoma were enrolled in a phase I, dose-escalation trial of avelumab (MSB0010718C), and treated with avelumab at doses of 10 mg/kg to 20 mg/kg every 2 weeks until disease progression or development of intolerable side effects. Tissue and blood immunological analyses were conducted. RESULTS: Two of seven (29%) patients with thymoma had a confirmed Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors-defined partial response, two (29%) had an unconfirmed partial response and three patients (two thymoma; one thymic carcinoma) had stable disease (43%). Three of four responses were observed after a single dose of avelumab. All responders developed immune-related adverse events that resolved with immunosuppressive therapy. Only one of four patients without a clinical response developed immune-related adverse events. Responders had a higher absolute lymphocyte count, lower frequencies of B cells, regulatory T cells, conventional dendritic cells, and natural killer cells prior to therapy. CONCLUSION: These results demonstrate anti-tumor activity of PD-L1 inhibition in patients with relapsed thymoma accompanied by a high frequency of immune-related adverse events. Pre-treatment immune cell subset populations differ between responders and non-responders. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov - NCT01772004 . Date of registration - January 21, 2013.

Balance and Mobility Improvements During Inpatient Rehabilitation Are Similar in Young-Old, Mid-Old, and Old-Old Adults With Traumatic Brain Injury.

OBJECTIVE: To compare balance, mobility, and functional outcomes across 3 age groups of older adults with traumatic brain injury; to describe differences between those discharged to private residences versus institutional care. SETTING: Acute inpatient rehabilitation facility. PARTICIPANTS: One hundred adults, mean age of 78.6 ± 7.9 years (range = 65-95 years), with an admitting diagnosis of traumatic brain injury. DESIGN: Retrospective case series. MAIN MEASURES: Functional Independence Measure (FIM) for Cognition and Mobility; Berg Balance Scale; Timed Up and Go; and gait speed, at admission to and discharge from an inpatient rehabilitation facility. RESULTS: Statistically significant improvements (P < .01) were made on the Timed Up and Go, Berg Balance Scale, and gait speed for young-old, mid-old, and old-old adults, with no differences among the 3 age groups. Substantial balance and mobility deficits remained. The FIM cognition (P = .013), FIM Walk (P = .009), and FIM Transfer (P = .013) scores were significantly better in individuals discharged home or home with family versus those discharged to an institution. CONCLUSION: Preliminary outcome data for specific balance and mobility measures are reported in 3 subgroups of older adults following traumatic brain injury, each of which made significant and similar improvements. Some FIM item scores discriminated between those discharged to a private residence versus a higher level of care.