In the last decades there has been a growing interest towards the concept of “Quality of Life” (QoL), not only in the bio-medical field, but also in other areas, such as sociology, psychology, economics, philosophy, architecture, journalism, politics, environment, sports, recreation, advertisements. Nevertheless QoL does turn out to be an ambiguous and elusive concept – a precise, clear and sha...

We provide male and female census count data, age-specific survivorship, and female age-specific fertility estimates for populations of seven wild primates that have been continuously monitored for at least 29 years: sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi) in Madagascar; muriqui (Brachyteles hypoxanthus) in Brazil; capuchin (Cebus capucinus) in Costa Rica; baboon (Papio cynocephalus) and blue monkey (Ce...

Parasites appropriate host resources to feed and/or to reproduce, and lower host fitness to varying degrees. As a consequence, they can negatively impact human and animal health, food production, economic trade, and biodiversity conservation. They can also be difficult to study and have historically been regarded as having little influence on ecosystem organization and function. Not surprisingl...

Cognition has been studied intensively for several decades, but the evolutionary processes that shape individual variation in cognitive traits remain elusive [1-3]. For instance, the strength of selection on a cognitive trait has never been estimated in a natural population, and the possibility that positive links with life history variation [1-5] are mitigated by costs [6] or confounded by eco...

In humans and other animals, harsh circumstances in early life predict morbidity and mortality in adulthood. Multiple adverse conditions are thought to be especially toxic, but this hypothesis has rarely been tested in a prospective, longitudinal framework, especially in long-lived mammals. Here we use prospective data on 196 wild female baboons to show that cumulative early adversity predicts ...

Drosophila species vary in the rates at which females remate and the number of sperm they receive in the laboratory. In species such as D. melanogaster and D. pseudoobscura, in which females receive thousands of sperm and remate infrequently compared with species such as D. hydei and D. nigrospiracula, where females receive only a few hundred sperm and remate many times in a day, wild caught fe...

We present life history data on wild Sumatran orangutans gleaned from a 32-year and a 5.5-year study. Estimated age at first reproduction was 15.4 years. At 9.3 years, the average interbirth interval for this population is the longest ever recorded for any great ape population, significantly longer than that of a Bornean orangutan population. We find that age-specific mortality of Sumatran oran...

Background Echinococcus multilocularis is a tapeworm whose adult stages parasitize the intestine of canids such as foxes and wolves. Also domestic dogs and cats can act as definitive hosts. The sylvatic life cycle includes small rodents as intermediate hosts but humans may become accidentally infected by ingestion of eggs. Sweden, Finland, UK, Ireland, and Malta are considered to be free of thi...

Experience does enter the equation to a degree, but many beginners are successful while others keep parrots for years with very poor breeding results. This is not only because they have too many birds and not enough time to devote to each pair, but because they lack the ability to identify with the parrots in their care. Yes, it is all about caring and that derives from careful observation and ...

To investigate whether mice genetically unaltered by many generations of laboratory selection exhibit similar hormonal and demographic responses to caloric restriction (CR) as laboratory rodents, we performed CR on cohorts of genetically heterogeneous male mice which were grandoffspring of wild-caught ancestors. Although hormonal changes, specifically an increase in corticosterone and decrease ...