PRESS RELEASE – COMESA Secretariat Signs Sub-Delegation Agreement with Malawi to Upgrade Mchinji Border Post – Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA)
Frontiers | The Internal, External and Extended Microbiomes of Hominins | Ecology and Evolution
The social structure of primates has recently been shown to influence the composition of their microbiomes. What is less clear is how primate microbiomes might in turn influence their social behavior, either in general or with particular reference to hominins. Here we use a comparative approach to understand how microbiomes of hominins have, or might have, changed since the last common ancestor (LCA) of chimpanzees and humans, roughly six million years ago. We focus on microbiomes associated with social evolution, namely those hosted or influenced by stomachs, intestines, armpits, and food fermentation. In doing so, we highlight the potential influence of microbiomes in hominin evolution while also offering a series of hypotheses and questions with regard to evolution of human stomach acidity, the factors structuring gut microbiomes, the functional consequences of changes in armpit ecology, and whether Homo erectus was engaged in fermentation. We conclude by briefly considering the possibility that hominin social behavior was influenced by prosocial microbes whose fitness was favored by social interactions among individual hominins.
* Author is/was a student, research assistant, postdoctoral researcher, or maternal-fetal medicine fellow in my laboratory † Author is/was a student whose dissertation committee I served on Preprin…
Once upon a time, lions were the world’s most widespread mammals. Now we know more about their genealogy – and that could make it easier to help the s....
The Expanding Genetic Toolbox of the Wasp Nasonia vitripennis and Its Relatives | Genetics
Abstract. The parasitoid wasp Nasonia represents a genus of four species that is emerging as a powerful genetic model system that has made and will continu