The Natural History of Model Organisms: The rhesus macaque as a success story of the Anthropocene

  1. Eve B Cooper  Is a corresponding author
  2. Lauren JN Brent
  3. Noah Snyder-Mackler
  4. Mewa Singh
  5. Asmita Sengupta
  6. Sunil Khatiwada
  7. Suchinda Malaivijitnond
  8. Zhou Qi Hai
  9. James P Higham
  1. New York University, United States
  2. University of Exeter, United Kingdom
  3. Arizona State University, United States
  4. University of Mysore, India
  5. Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, India
  6. Institute of Genetics and Animal Biotechnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland
  7. Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
  8. Guangxi Normal University, China

Abstract

Of all the non-human primate species studied by researchers, the rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) is likely the most widely used across biological disciplines. Rhesus macaques have thrived during the Anthropocene and now have the largest natural range of any non-human primate. They are highly social, exhibit marked genetic diversity, and display remarkable niche flexibility (which allows them to live in a range of habitats and survive on a variety of diets). These characteristics mean that rhesus macaques are well-suited for understanding the links between sociality, health and fitness, and also for investigating intra-specific variation, adaptation and other topics in evolutionary ecology.

Data availability

No new data was generated for this article.

Article and author information

Author details

  1. Eve B Cooper

    Department of Anthropology, New York University, New York, United States
    For correspondence
    eve.cooper@nyu.edu
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3804-6285
  2. Lauren JN Brent

    University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1202-1939
  3. Noah Snyder-Mackler

    School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-3026-6160
  4. Mewa Singh

    Biopsychology Laboratory, University of Mysore, Mysuru, India
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-9198-0192
  5. Asmita Sengupta

    Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bengaluru, India
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2477-7290
  6. Sunil Khatiwada

    Institute of Genetics and Animal Biotechnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Garbatka, Poland
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-1807-7375
  7. Suchinda Malaivijitnond

    Department of Biology, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0003-0897-2632
  8. Zhou Qi Hai

    Key Laboratory of Ecology of Rare and Endangered Species and Environmental Protection, Guangxi Normal University, Guilin, China
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2832-5005
  9. James P Higham

    Department of Anthropology, New York University, New York, United States
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-1133-2030

Funding

National Institutes of Health (R01-AG060931)

  • Eve B Cooper
  • Lauren JN Brent
  • Noah Snyder-Mackler
  • James P Higham

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Reviewing Editor

  1. Helena Pérez Valle, eLife, United Kingdom

Publication history

  1. Received: February 25, 2022
  2. Accepted: July 7, 2022
  3. Accepted Manuscript published: July 8, 2022 (version 1)
  4. Accepted Manuscript updated: July 21, 2022 (version 2)
  5. Version of Record published: August 2, 2022 (version 3)

Copyright

© 2022, Cooper et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

Metrics

  • 2,559
    Page views
  • 311
    Downloads
  • 1
    Citations

Article citation count generated by polling the highest count across the following sources: Crossref, PubMed Central, Scopus.

Download links

A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.

Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)

Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)

Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)

  1. Eve B Cooper
  2. Lauren JN Brent
  3. Noah Snyder-Mackler
  4. Mewa Singh
  5. Asmita Sengupta
  6. Sunil Khatiwada
  7. Suchinda Malaivijitnond
  8. Zhou Qi Hai
  9. James P Higham
(2022)
The Natural History of Model Organisms: The rhesus macaque as a success story of the Anthropocene
eLife 11:e78169.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.78169
  1. Further reading

Further reading

    1. Ecology
    2. Evolutionary Biology
    Laure Olazcuaga, Raymonde Baltenweck ... Julien Foucaud
    Short Report

    Most phytophagous insect species exhibit a limited diet breadth and specialize on a few or a single host plant. In contrast, some species display a remarkably large diet breadth, with host plants spanning several families and many species. It is unclear, however, whether this phylogenetic generalism is supported by a generic metabolic use of common host chemical compounds (‘metabolic generalism’) or alternatively by distinct uses of diet-specific compounds (‘multi-host metabolic specialism’)? Here, we simultaneously investigated the metabolomes of fruit diets and of individuals of a generalist phytophagous species, Drosophila suzukii, that developed on them. The direct comparison of metabolomes of diets and consumers enabled us to disentangle the metabolic fate of common and rarer dietary compounds. We showed that the consumption of biochemically dissimilar diets resulted in a canalized, generic response from generalist individuals, consistent with the metabolic generalism hypothesis. We also showed that many diet-specific metabolites, such as those related to the particular color, odor, or taste of diets, were not metabolized, and rather accumulated in consumer individuals, even when probably detrimental to fitness. As a result, while individuals were mostly similar across diets, the detection of their particular diet was straightforward. Our study thus supports the view that dietary generalism may emerge from a passive, opportunistic use of various resources, contrary to more widespread views of an active role of adaptation in this process. Such a passive stance towards dietary chemicals, probably costly in the short term, might favor the later evolution of new diet specializations.

    1. Ecology
    2. Evolutionary Biology
    Jason P Dinh, SN Patek
    Research Article Updated

    Evolutionary theory suggests that individuals should express costly traits at a magnitude that optimizes the trait bearer’s cost-benefit difference. Trait expression varies across a species because costs and benefits vary among individuals. For example, if large individuals pay lower costs than small individuals, then larger individuals should reach optimal cost-benefit differences at greater trait magnitudes. Using the cavitation-shooting weapons found in the big claws of male and female snapping shrimp, we test whether size- and sex-dependent expenditures explain scaling and sex differences in weapon size. We found that males and females from three snapping shrimp species (Alpheus heterochaelis, Alpheus angulosus, and Alpheus estuariensis) show patterns consistent with tradeoffs between weapon and abdomen size. For male A. heterochaelis, the species for which we had the greatest statistical power, smaller individuals showed steeper tradeoffs. Our extensive dataset in A. heterochaelis also included data about pairing, breeding season, and egg clutch size. Therefore, we could test for reproductive tradeoffs and benefits in this species. Female A. heterochaelis exhibited tradeoffs between weapon size and egg count, average egg volume, and total egg mass volume. For average egg volume, smaller females exhibited steeper tradeoffs. Furthermore, in males but not females, large weapons were positively correlated with the probability of being paired and the relative size of their pair mates. In conclusion, we identified size-dependent tradeoffs that could underlie reliable scaling of costly traits. Furthermore, weapons are especially beneficial to males and burdensome to females, which could explain why males have larger weapons than females.