FOR 2136: Sociality and Health in Primates

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Strong links between sociality, health and fitness have been identified in humans and animals, but their exact nature and direction as well as the underlying mechanisms remain to be explored. While it has been established that social contacts facilitate the transmission of many parasites, and that unavoidable costs of sociality accrue in the form of increased susceptibility to infectious and non-infectious disease, recent research has indicated that social contacts can also facilitate the transmission of benign microorganisms and that social interactions can buffer individuals from the consequences of social stress by modulating their immune response. The individual projects comprising the building blocks of this Research Unit will address novel and timely questions about the above relationships based on coordinated research on wild primates representing all major primate radiations. By combining primate field studies with molecular analyses, this Research Unit will also generate synergies aimed at (i) assessing correlations between three levels of sociality (social organization, group size, individuals) and the composition of the corresponding microorganism communities (microbiome, phagome, virome, gastrointestinal parasites) (ii) better understanding the social factors modulating individual stress responses and their health consequences, (iii) estimating fitness consequences of sociality-related variation in health and condition. With this research agenda, we aim to overcome the traditional fragmentation between primate behavioral ecology and biomedical research by generating a close network of collaborations within and between projects and institutions, and by training a cohort of PhD students in a new and unique program.