An updated vocal repertoire of wild adult bonobos (Pan paniscus).

Research over the last 20 years has shed important light on the vocal behaviour of our closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, but mostly relies on qualitative vocal repertoires, for which quantitative validations are absent. Such data are critical for a holistic understanding of a species` communication system and unpacking how these systems compare more broadly with other primate and non-primate species. Here we make key progress by providing the first quantitative validation of a Pan vocal repertoire, specifically for wild bonobos.

Transmission networks of long-term and short-term knowledge in a foraging society.

Cultural transmission across generations is key to cumulative cultural evolution. While several mechanisms-such as vertical, horizontal, and oblique transmission-have been studied for decades, how these mechanisms change across the life course, beyond childhood, remains unclear. Furthermore, it is under-explored whether different mechanisms apply to distinct learning processes: long-term learning-where individuals invest time and effort to acquire skills-and short-term learning-where individuals share information of immediate use.

Do chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) attribute preferences to virtual competitors?

Many animal species live in multi-level societies regulated by complex patterns of dominance. Avoiding competition with dominant group-mates for resources such as food and mates is an important skill for subordinate individuals in these societies, if they wish to evade harassment and aggression. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are an example of such a species.

A causal framework for the drivers of animal social network structure.

A major goal of behavioural ecology is to explain how phenotypic and ecological factors shape the networks of social relationships that animals form with one another. This inferential task is notoriously challenging. The social networks of interest are generally not observed, but must be approximated from behavioural samples.

Denisovan mitochondrial DNA from dental calculus of the >146,000-year-old Harbin cranium.

Denisovans have yet to be directly associated with a hominin cranium, limiting our understanding of their morphology and geographical distribution. We have attempted to retrieve DNA from a nearly complete Middle Pleistocene cranium from Harbin (>146 ka), northeastern China. Although no DNA could be retrieved from a tooth or the petrous bone, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) could be isolated from dental calculus.

Fermented fruits: scrumping, sharing, and the origin of feasting.

Mounting evidence points to the importance of fermented fruits in the diets of tropical frugivores, especially African apes. But how has this fundamental aspect of ape ecology escaped scientific attention over the past six decades? Here we draw inspiration from the Middle Ages to fill an essential void in scientific discourse.

Higher blood lipid levels after the transition to menopause in two forager-horticulturalist populations.

Background: Reproduction affects health and longevity among females across the life course. While significant focus has been devoted to the role of menarche, menopause remains understudied. Most menopause research is conducted in industrialized populations, where the risk of cardiovascular diseases increases progressively during the menopausal transition.

High water turnover, hydration status, and heat stress among Daasanach pastoralists in a hot, semi-arid climate.

Background And Objectives: Water is essential for proper physiological function. As temperatures increase, populations may struggle to meet water needs despite adaptations or acclimation; chronic dehydration can cause kidney damage. We evaluate how daily water requirements are associated with ambient temperature (ambT), wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT), urine specific gravity (USG; marker of hydration status), and albumin:creatinine ratio (ACR; kidney function biomarker) among Daasanach pastoralists living in a hot, dry northern Kenyan climate.

Density-dependent network structuring within and across wild animal systems.

Theory predicts that high population density leads to more strongly connected spatial and social networks, but how local density drives individuals' positions within their networks is unclear. This gap reduces our ability to understand and predict density-dependent processes. Here we show that density drives greater network connectedness at the scale of individuals within wild animal populations.

Ancient genomes provide evidence of demographic shift to Slavic-associated groups in Moravia.

Background: The Slavs are a major ethnolinguistic group of Europe, yet the process that led to their formation remains disputed. As of the sixth century CE, people supposedly belonging to the Slavs populated the space between the Avar Khaganate in the Carpathian Basin, the Merovingian Frankish Empire to the West and the Balkan Peninsula to the South. Proposed theories to explain those events are, however, conceptually incompatible, as some invoke major population movements while others stress the continuity of local populations.

Ancient DNA connects large-scale migration with the spread of Slavs.

The second half of the first millennium CE in Central and Eastern Europe was accompanied by fundamental cultural and political transformations. This period of change is commonly associated with the appearance of the Slavs, which is supported by textual evidence and coincides with the emergence of similar archaeological horizons. However, so far there has been no consensus on whether this archaeological horizon spread by migration, Slavicisation or a combination of both.

The Indo-European Cognate Relationships dataset.

The Indo-European Cognate Relationships (IE-CoR) dataset is an open-access relational dataset showing how related, inherited words ('cognates') pattern across 160 languages of the Indo-European family. IE-CoR is intended as a benchmark dataset for computational research into the evolution of the Indo-European languages. It is structured around 170 reference meanings in core lexicon, and contains 25731 lexeme entries, analysed into 4981 cognate sets.

Social connectedness without eye contact: 18- but not 9-month-olds use proximal touch to infer third-party joint attention during observational learning.

Decades of research have highlighted the important role of joint attention in early cultural learning. However, most previous studies focused on a limited range of joint attention settings involving the learner's participation in joint attention, characterized by eye contact and triadic gaze following. This has created an incomplete picture, tending to neglect the diversity in which infants experience social connectedness in their daily lives.

Genomic insights from a final Bronze Age community buried in a collective tumulus in an Urnfield settlement in Northeastern Iberia.

The transition from the Bronze Age (BA) to the Iron Age (IA) on the Northeastern Iberian Peninsula is characterized by the emergence of cremation as the main funerary practice. Cultural attributes of a group, known as the Urnfield Culture, expanded from Central Europe to Northeastern Iberia during the Final Bronze Age (FBA), from ~1300 to ~850 cal BCE. Various hypotheses on the group's emergence exist, but cremations hinder DNA preservation.

Parenting culture: A multimethod perspective on parenting practices among the Nso, Cameroon.

Parenting behaviors are studied through various qualitative and quantitative methods, including observations, interviews, and questionnaires, to identify both culturally specific and universal patterns of parents' interactions with their offspring. However, these methods have rarely been combined to systematically investigate methodological convergence and divergence in capturing parenting dynamics. The present study employs a mixed method approach by including video observations, picture card interviews, and parenting ethnotheory questionnaires with a focus on a suburban Nso community in Cameroon, with 51 parents ( = 34 years; 43 mothers and eight fathers) of infants and toddlers ( = 8.

First record of a Late Miocene hominid from North Macedonia.

Known for over a century, the Late Miocene mammalian faunas of Veles, North Macedonia, have long been recognized for their scientific importance. However, hominid remains had not been previously reported from this fossil-rich area. Here, we report the discovery of an isolated upper molar from the vicinity of Veles-most likely from the Belushka locality-which constitutes the first known record of a Late Miocene hominid from the Republic of North Macedonia, and provide a review of the associated mammalian assemblages.

Bone Adhered Sediments as a Source of Target and Environmental DNA and Proteins.

In recent years, sediments from cave environments have provided invaluable insights into ancient hominids, as well as past fauna and flora. Unfortunately, however, sediments are not always collected during excavation. In this study, we analyzed an overlooked but abundant resource in archaeological collections - sediments adhered to bone.

Gene-culture association and coevolution.

The genetic evolution of cultural species can be altered by the dynamic interaction of their genes with their cultural traits. In humans, examples of gene-culture interactions are common and a deeper theoretical understanding of gene-culture coevolution is a necessary precursor to recognizing the effects of culture on human evolution. Although there are a large number of empirical studies of gene-culture coevolutionary phenomena and a large amount of verbal theory, our theoretical understanding of gene-culture co-evolution, of what kinds of cultural traits are relevant, and of the quantitative nature of cultural interactions with genes remains incomplete.

A global and interoperable dataset of linguistic distributions derived from the Atlas of the World's Languages.

Asher and Moseley's Atlas of the World's Languages illustrates the past and present spatial distribution of human languages across more than 100 maps. While the Atlas is an impressive resource, its data are not readily accessible for research. Language areas are presented as printed maps and referenced by name, rather than as digital spatial objects linked to a standardised language catalogue.

Risk-taking incentives predict aggression heuristics in female gorillas.

Competition is commonly reflected in aggressive interactions among groupmates as individuals try to attain or maintain higher social ranks that can offer them better access to critical resources. In this study, we investigate the factors that can shift competitive incentives against higher- or lower-ranking groupmates, that is, more or less powerful individuals. We use a long-term behavioural data set on five wild groups of the two gorilla species starting in 1998, and we show that most aggression is directed from higher- to lower-ranking adult females close in rank, highlighting rank-reinforcement incentives.

Smaller birth size may be associated with lower physical activity in adult women.

Conditions during fetal development are crucial for a long-term health. Individuals with small size at birth are suggested to have energy-thrifty physiology, a tendency to conserve energy due to adaptations to undernutrition during early development. However, energy also could be saved by having low physical activity.

Inflammaging is minimal among forager-horticulturalists in the Bolivian Amazon.

An increase in chronic systemic inflammation in later life, termed inflammaging, is implicated in health risk. However, it is unclear whether inflammaging develops in all human populations, or if it is the product of environmental mismatch. We assessed inflammaging in Tsimane forager-horticulturalists of the Bolivian Amazon, using serum cytokines in a primarily cross-sectional sample (1134 samples from = 714 individuals, age 39-94, 51.

Social learning leads to inflexible strategy use in children across three societies.

Human adaptability relies on our capacity to learn, either from others (socially) or by ourselves (asocially), and to update our strategy repertoire. Cognitive flexibility is the psychological mechanism that mediates strategy use. Humans excel at switching from strategies that no longer work to new ones, but when given the chance to voluntarily switch from familiar to better strategies (elective flexibility), we often exhibit remarkable difficulty.

Performance of shotgun metagenomics on whole blood from patients with suspected bloodstream infection: Challenges remain.

Bloodstream infections (BSI) are common, and identifying the causative organism is crucial for effective patient management. Shotgun metagenomics (SMg) has emerged as a promising diagnostic tool; however, standardized protocols are lacking. This study aimed to evaluate the use of SMg for diagnosing BSI in patients with confirmed or suspected infections, using stored samples collected at the time of blood culture (BC).

Selective use of distant stone resources by the earliest Oldowan toolmakers.

The adaptive shift that favored stone tool-assisted behavior in hominins began by 3.3 million years ago. However, evidence from early archaeological sites indicates relatively short-distance stone transport dynamics similar to behaviors observed in nonhuman primates.