Christina M. Bergey

Kinda baboons (Papio kindae) and grayfoot chacma baboons (P. ursinus griseipes) hybridize in the Kafue river valley, Zambia

The ranges of small kinda (Papio kindae) and much larger grayfooted chacma (P. ursinus griseipes) baboons adjoin in the Kafue National Park, Zambia. In a visual survey of baboons at 48 sites in the Kafue River drainage we found that, contrary to previous reports, groups at the species interface near the town of Ngoma are phenotypically diverse and presumably formed by multigenerational hybridization. Mitochondrial and/or Y‐chromosome genetic markers from fecal samples (N=164) collected at 29 sites support this conclusion. Groups with phenotypic signs of a history of hybridization also had taxon‐specific mitochondria and Y‐haplotypes from both parental species. Although the distribution of mitochondrial haplotypes largely mirrored that of external phenotypes, a significant proportion of male specimens from grayfoot as well as hybrid groups carried kinda Y‐chromosomes, and kinda Y‐chromosomes were involved in all observed cases of mitochondrial/Y‐chromosome discordance. These observations are consistent with, though they do not prove, a population history in which the range of chacmas and the hybrid zone have advanced at the expense of the kinda range. They also suggest that, unexpectedly, kinda male×chacma female matings are much more common than the reciprocal cross in the ancestry of hybrids. We suggest that distinctive male kinda behavior and the “juvenile” appearance of kinda baboons of both sexes, perhaps combined with obstetric difficulties of a small kinda female carrying the large offspring of a chacma male, may account for this bias. Am. J. Primatol. 73:291–303, 2011.

Neandertal genome: the ins and outs of African genetic diversity.

Analysis of the Neandertal genome indicates gene flow between Neandertals and modern humans of Eurasia but not Africa. This surprising result is difficult to reconcile with current models of human origins and might have to do with insufficient African sampling.

HippDB: A database of readily targeted helical protein-protein interactions

SUMMARY HippDB catalogs every protein-protein interaction whose structure is available in the Protein Data Bank and which exhibits one or more helices at the interface. The Web site accepts queries on variables such as helix length and sequence, and it provides computational alanine scanning and change in solvent-accessible surface area values for every interfacial residue. HippDB is intended to serve as a starting point for structure-based small molecule and peptidomimetic drug development. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION HippDB is freely available on the web at http://www.nyu.edu/projects/arora/hippdb. The Web site is implemented in PHP, MySQL and Apache. Source code freely available for download at http://code.google.com/p/helidb, implemented in Perl and supported on Linux. CONTACT arora@nyu.edu.

A Metagenomic Study of Primate Insect Diet Diversity

Descriptions of primate diets are generally based on either direct observation of foraging behavior, morphological classification of food remains from feces, or analysis of the stomach contents of deceased individuals. Some diet items (e.g. insect prey), however, are difficult to identify visually, and observation conditions often do not permit adequate quantitative sampling of feeding behavior. Moreover, the taxonomically informative morphology of some food species (e.g. swallowed seeds, insect exoskeletons) may be destroyed by the digestive process. Because of these limitations, we used a metagenomic approach to conduct a preliminary, “proof of concept” study of interspecific variation in the insect component of the diets of six sympatric NewWorld monkeys known, based on observational field studies, to differ markedly in their feeding ecology. We used generalized arthropod polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primers and cloning to sequence mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences of the arthropod cytochrome b (CYT B) gene from fecal samples of wild woolly, titi, saki, capuchin, squirrel, and spider monkeys collected from a single sampling site in western Amazonia where these genera occur sympatrically. We then assigned preliminary taxonomic identifications to the sequences by basic local alignment search tool (BLAST) comparison to arthropod CYT Bsequences present in GenBank. This study is the first to use molecular techniques to identify insect prey in primate diets. The results suggest that a metagenomic approach may prove valuable in augmenting and corroborating observational data and increasing the resolution of primate diet studies, although the lack of comparative reference sequences for many South American insects limits the approach at present. As such reference data become available for more animal and plant taxa, this approach also holds promise for studying additional components of primate diets. Am. J. Primatol. 74:622–631, 2012.

A New Method for Genome-wide Marker Development and Genotyping Holds Great Promise for Molecular Primatology

Over the last two decades primatologists have benefited from the use of numerous molecular markers to study various aspects of primate behavior and evolutionary history. However, most of the studies to date have been based on a single locus, usually mitochondrial DNA, or a few nuclear markers, e.g., microsatellites. Unfortunately, the use of such markers not only is unable to address successfully important questions in primate population genetics and phylogenetics (mainly because of the discordance between gene tree and species tree), but also their development is often a time-consuming and expensive task. The advent of next-generation sequencing allows researchers to generate large amounts of genomic data for nonmodel organisms. However, whole genome sequencing is still cost prohibitive for most primate species. We here introduce a second-generation sequencing technique for genotyping thousands of genome-wide markers for nonmodel organisms. Restriction site–associated DNA sequencing (RAD-seq) reduces the complexity of the genome and allows inexpensive and fast discovery of thousands of markers in many individuals. Here, we describe the principles of this technique and we demonstrate its application in five primates, Microcebus sp., Cebus sp., Theropithecus gelada, Pan troglodytes, and Homo sapiens, representing some of the major lineages within the order. Despite technical and bioinformatic challenges, RAD-seq is a promising method for multilocus phylogenetic and population genetic studies in primates, particularly in young clades in which a high number of orthologous regions are likely to be found across populations or species.

AluHunter: a database of potentially polymorphic Alu insertions for use in primate phylogeny and population genetics

SUMMARY AluHunter is a database of taxon-specific primate Alu elements for use in phylogeny and population genetics. The software automatically isolates potentially polymorphic Alu insertions in sequences submitted to GenBank by screening the elements against reference genomes. The resultant database of variable markers is a valuable resource for researchers interested in characterizing Alu elements in their primate taxon of interest. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION The AluHunter database can be accessed at http://www.aluhunter.com. CONTACT cmb433@nyu.edu.