Applying collocation and APRIORI analyses to chimpanzee diets: Methods for investigating nonrandom food combinations in primate self-medication.

Autor: Freymann E; Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, Department of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK., d'Oliveira Coelho J; Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, Department of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK., Hobaiter C; Budongo Conservation Field Station, Masindi, Uganda.; Wild Minds Lab, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK., Huffman MA; Wildlife Research Center, Inuyama Campus, Kyoto University, Inuyama, Japan., Muhumuza G; Budongo Conservation Field Station, Masindi, Uganda., Zuberbühler K; Budongo Conservation Field Station, Masindi, Uganda.; Department of Comparative Cognition, Institute of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland., Carvalho S; Primate Models for Behavioural Evolution Lab, Department of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, Institute of Human Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.; Interdisciplinary Centre for Archaeology and the Evolution of Human Behaviour, University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal Gorongosa National Park, Sofala, Mozambique.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: American journal of primatology [Am J Primatol] 2024 May; Vol. 86 (5), pp. e23603. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Jan 31.
DOI: 10.1002/ajp.23603
Abstrakt: Identifying novel medicinal resources in chimpanzee diets has historically presented challenges, requiring extensive behavioral data collection and health monitoring, accompanied by expensive pharmacological analyses. When putative therapeutic self-medicative behaviors are observed, these events are often considered isolated occurrences, with little attention paid to other resources ingested in combination. For chimpanzees, medicinal resource combinations could play an important role in maintaining well-being by tackling different symptoms of an illness, chemically strengthening efficacy of a treatment, or providing prophylactic compounds that prevent future ailments. We call this concept the self-medicative resource combination hypothesis. However, a dearth of methodological approaches for holistically investigating primate feeding ecology has limited our ability to identify nonrandom resource combinations and explore potential synergistic relationships between medicinal resource candidates. Here we present two analytical tools that test such a hypothesis and demonstrate these approaches on feeding data from the Sonso chimpanzee community in Budongo Forest, Uganda. Using 4 months of data, we establish that both collocation and APRIORI analyses are effective exploratory tools for identifying binary combinations, and that APRIORI is effective for multi-item rule associations. We then compare outputs from both methods, finding up to 60% agreement, and propose APRIORI as more effective for studies requiring control over confidence intervals and those investigating nonrandom associations between more than two resources. These analytical tools, which can be extrapolated across the animal kingdom, can provide a cost-effective and efficient method for targeting resources for further pharmacological investigation, potentially aiding in the discovery of novel medicines.
(© 2024 The Authors. American Journal of Primatology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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