Papers by Nathaniel J Dominy
Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health, 2024
Play is an essential part of childhood, and growing attention has focused on the potential health... more Play is an essential part of childhood, and growing attention has focused on the potential health benefits of 'risky' or 'thrill-seeking' play. Such play behavior is readily observed on any playground, where it can sometimes lead to injuries-most often from fall impacts-that require medical attention. Monkey bars account for ~7% of childhood arm fractures in the USA, an alarming statistic that raises difficult questions over its costs and benefits. Many authors view monkey bars as a public health hazard, but it is plausible that our childhood impulse toward thrill-seeking play is a result of selective pressures throughout our primate evolutionary history. Indeed, emerging evidence suggests that the developmental benefits of thrill-seeking play extend into adulthood, outweighing the occasional costs of injury. Disparate and consequential, these dueling perspectives have fueled debate among health professionals and policymakers, but with little attention to the work of biological anthropologists. Here we call attention to the hominin fossil record and play behaviors of non-human primates, providing a novel perspective that bolsters arguments for the adaptive significance of thrill-seeking play. The moment for such a review is timely, for it commemorates the centennial anniversaries of two playground icons: the jungle gym and monkey bars. Lay summary Our paper traces the origin and history of 'monkey bars', an iconic playground apparatus. Designed to elicit thrill-seeking play, monkey bars are associated with many positive health outcomes during childhood, boosting physical and emotional well-being. Yet, monkey bars are also a major cause of upper-limb injuries among children, including bone fractures, leading to debate among public health professionals. Our paper shines a spotlight on this problem while also highlighting the evolutionary perspectives of biological anthropologists.
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Science, 2024
Climate change–induced droughts lead to violent clashes in Kenya. An actor’s pivot to stem cell a... more Climate change–induced droughts lead to violent clashes in Kenya. An actor’s pivot to stem cell advocacy cements his legacy as a hero. Start-ups promising digital immortality prepare to reanimate the dead. From a meditation on Himalayan moths and a futuristic fable about what it means to be alive to immersive meditations on happiness in Bhutan and loneli- ness online, science-minded moviegoers were rewarded with a number of thought-provoking offerings at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. Read on for our reviewers’ impressions of seven of this year’s films.
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Nature Ecology & Evolution, 2024
Set 45,000 years ago, Out of Darkness begins with a band of six modern humans (Homo sapiens) tell... more Set 45,000 years ago, Out of Darkness begins with a band of six modern humans (Homo sapiens) telling stories by firelight. Subtly, this opening scene reflects current palaeoanthropological theory by establishing fire as a leading character in the human story — providing warmth in glacial landscapes; light for evening storytelling; and a defence against unseen threats. But there is “danger in bringing light to dark places”, explains Odal, the group’s spiritual leader. “You might find out what lies in the darkness.”
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i-Perception, 2023
In the hall of animal oddities, the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) is the only mammal with a color-... more In the hall of animal oddities, the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) is the only mammal with a color-shifting tapetum lucidum and the only ruminant with a lichen-dominated diet. These puzzling traits coexist with yet another enigma––ocular media that transmit up to 60% of ultraviolet (UV) light, enough to excite the cones responsible for color vision. It is unclear why any day-active circum-Arctic mammal would benefit from UV visual sensitivity, but it could improve detection of UV-absorbing lichens against a background of UV-reflecting snows, especially during the extended twilight hours of winter. To explore this idea and advance our understanding of reindeer visual ecology, we recorded the reflectance spectra of several ground-growing (terricolous), shrubby (fruticose) lichens in the diets of reindeer living in Cairngorms National Park, Scotland.
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eLife, 2023
Adulis, located on the Red Sea coast in present-day Eritrea, was a bustling trading centre betwee... more Adulis, located on the Red Sea coast in present-day Eritrea, was a bustling trading centre between the first and seventh centuries CE. Several classical geographers—Agatharchides of Cnidus, Pliny the Elder, Strabo—noted the value of Adulis to Greco-Roman Egypt, particularly as an emporium for living animals, including baboons (Papio spp.). Though fragmentary, these accounts predict the Adulite origins of mummified baboons in Ptolemaic catacombs, while inviting questions on the geoprovenance of older (Late Period) baboons recovered from Gabbanat el-Qurud (‘Valley of the Monkeys’), Egypt. Dated to ca. 800–540 BCE, these animals could extend the antiquity of Egyptian–Adulite trade by as much as five centuries. Previously, Dominy et al. (2020) used stable isotope analysis to show that two New Kingdom specimens of Papio hamadryas originate from the Horn of Africa. Here, we report the complete mitochondrial genomes from a mummified baboon from Gabbanat el-Qurud and 14 museum specimens with known provenance together with published georeferenced mitochondrial sequence data. Phylogenetic assignment connects the mummified baboon to modern populations of P. hamadryas in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and eastern Sudan. This result, assuming geographical stability of phylogenetic clades, corroborates Greco-Roman historiographies by pointing toward present-day Eritrea, and by extension Adulis, as a source of baboons for Late Period Egyptians. It also establishes geographic continuity with baboons from the fabled Land of Punt (Dominy et al., 2020), giving weight to speculation that Punt and Adulis were essentially the same trading centres separated by a thousand years of history.
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Royal Society Open Science, 2023
The forelimbs of hominoid primates (apes) are decidedly more flexible than those of monkeys, espe... more The forelimbs of hominoid primates (apes) are decidedly more flexible than those of monkeys, especially at the shoulder, elbow and wrist joints. It is tempting to link the greater mobility of these joints to the functional demands of vertical climbing and below-branch suspension, but field-based kinematic studies have found few differences between chimpanzees and monkeys when comparing forelimb excursion angles during vertical ascent (upclimbing). There is, however, a strong theoretical argument for focusing instead on vertical descent (downclimbing), which motivated us to quantify the effects of climbing directionality on the forelimb kinematics of wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and sooty mangabeys (Cercocebus atys). We found that the shoulders and elbows of chimpanzees and sooty mangabeys subtended larger joint angles during bouts of downclimbing, and that the magnitude of this difference was greatest among chimpanzees. Our results cast new light on the functional importance of downclimbing, while also burnishing functional hypotheses that emphasize the role of vertical climbing during the evolution of apes, including the human lineage.
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Royal Society Open Science, 2023
Dietary variation within and across species drives the ecoevolutionary responsiveness of genes ne... more Dietary variation within and across species drives the ecoevolutionary responsiveness of genes necessary to metabolize nutrients and other components. Recent evidence from humans and other mammals suggests that sugar-rich diets of floral nectar and ripe fruit have favoured mutations in, and functional preservation of, the ADH7 gene, which encodes the ADH class 4 enzyme responsible for metabolizing ethanol. Here we interrogate a large, comparative dataset of ADH7 gene sequence variation, including that underlying the amino acid residue located at the key site (294) that regulates the affinity of ADH7 for ethanol. Our analyses span 171 mammal species, including 59 newly sequenced. We report extensive variation, especially among frugivorous and nectarivorous bats, with potential for functional impact. We also report widespread variation in the retention and probable pseudogenization of
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Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2023
Home runs in baseball-fair balls hit out of the field of play-have risen since 1980, driving stra... more Home runs in baseball-fair balls hit out of the field of play-have risen since 1980, driving strategic shifts in gameplay. Myriad factors likely account for these trends, with some speculating that global warming has contributed via a reduction in ballpark air density. Here we use observations from 100,000 Major League Baseball games and 240,000 individual batted balls to show that higher temperatures substantially increase home runs. We isolate human-caused warming with climate models, finding that >500 home runs since 2010 are attributable to historical warming. Several hundred additional home runs per season are projected due to future warming. Adaptations such as building domes on stadiums or shifting day games to night games reduce temperature's effects on America's pastime. Our results highlight the myriad ways that a warmer planet will restructure our lives, livelihoods, and recreation, some quantifiable and easily adapted to, as shown here, many others, not.
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Spektrum der Wissenschaft, 2023
In Afrika gelten Paviane oft als Plage, doch für die alten Ägypter waren sie heilige Tiere. Zu di... more In Afrika gelten Paviane oft als Plage, doch für die alten Ägypter waren sie heilige Tiere. Zu dieser Vorstellung bewog die Menschen womöglich das Verhalten der Affen, die sie aus dem sagenumwobenen Punt heranschafften. Pavianmumien geben nun Aufschluss über die tatsächliche Lage jenes »Goldlands«.
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Science, 2023
A team of wildlife crime hunters work overtime to take down a dangerous ivory poaching ring. A co... more A team of wildlife crime hunters work overtime to take down a dangerous ivory poaching ring. A couple tenderly navigates life with Alzheimer’s disease. A space agency prepares for a manned mission to Mars. From a satirical glimpse into the future of human reproduction to a sobering look at the history of visual propaganda, a number of films featured at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival touched on topics and themes likely to be of interest to scientific audiences. Read on to see what our reviewers thought of seven of the films on offer this year. —Valerie Thompson
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International Journal of Primatology, 2023
Language is a powerful form of communication that can reify and reproduce colonial legacies. For ... more Language is a powerful form of communication that can reify and reproduce colonial legacies. For many primatologists-scholars who engage with diverse publics, ranging from personal social networks to formal classroom settings to myriad forms of science communication and outreach-it is common to encounter Anglophone speakers who add a final phoneme-ng, or /ŋ/, to the word "orangutan." We interrogate and explicate the colonial and literary legacies of this phonological enigma. Structured as an essay, our article reports phonological survey results from 569 British-and North American-English speakers as well as a time series analyses sourced from Google Books Ngram Viewer. We found a large disparity between British-and North American-English speakers-34% and 64% of which add the final /ŋ/, respectively-and telling reversals to the predicted extinction curve of "ourang outang" in Google Books' British-and American-English corpora. Taken together, these findings put a new and problematic light on the final /ŋ/. Our intent is not to police the boundaries of acceptable discourse but to equip primatologists with the background and data needed for productively discussing and remedying colonial legacies during the course of educational and public outreach.
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Evolutionary Anthropology, 2022
Twenty years ago, Dominy and colleagues published "The sensory ecology of primate food perception... more Twenty years ago, Dominy and colleagues published "The sensory ecology of primate food perception," an impactful review that brought new perspectives to understanding primate foraging adaptations. Their review synthesized information on primate senses and explored how senses informed feeding behavior. Research on primate sensory ecology has seen explosive growth in the last two decades. Here, we revisit this important topic, focusing on the numerous new discoveries and lines of innovative research. We begin by reviewing each of the five traditionally recognized senses involved in foraging: audition, olfaction, vision, touch, and taste. For each sense, we provide an overview of sensory function and comparative ecology, comment on the state of knowledge at the time of the original review, and highlight advancements and lingering gaps in knowledge. Next, we provide an outline for creative, multidisciplinary, and innovative future research programs that we anticipate will generate exciting new discoveries in the next two decades.
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Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 2022
1. Silica is crucial to terrestrial plant life and geochemical cycling on Earth. It is also impli... more 1. Silica is crucial to terrestrial plant life and geochemical cycling on Earth. It is also implicated in the evolution of mammalian teeth, but there is debate over which type of siliceous particle has exerted the strongest selective pressure on tooth morphology.
2. Debate revolves around the amorphous silica bodies (phytoliths) present in plants and the various forms of siliceous grit—that is, crystalline quartz (sand, soil, dust)—on plant surfaces. The problem is that conventional measures of sil- ica often quantify both particle types simultaneously.
3. Here we describe a protocol that relies on heavy-liquid flotation to separate and quantify siliceous particulate matter in the diets of herbivores. The method is reproducible and well suited to detecting species- or population-level differ- ences in silica ingestion. In addition, we detected meaningful variation within the digestive tracts of cows, an outcome that supports the premise of ruminal fluid ‘washing’ of siliceous grit.
4. We used bootstrap resampling to estimate the sample sizes needed to compare species, populations or individuals in space and time. We found that a minimum sample of 12 individuals is necessary if the species is a browser or as many as 55 if the species is a grazer, which are more variable. But a sample size of 20 is adequate for detecting statistical differences. We conclude by suggesting that our protocol for differentiating and quantifying silica holds promise for testing competing hypotheses on the evolution of dental traits.
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2022
Obscure and unheralded in the annals of visual neuroscience, the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) is ... more Obscure and unheralded in the annals of visual neuroscience, the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) is having a moment thanks to the work of Fosbury & Jeffery [1]. Their paper pulls on several threads at once to unravel the physiology and functional ecology of two ocular oddities. The first is a colour-shifting tapetum lucidum, the retinal tissue responsible for ‘eye shine’. This mirror-like tissue changes from a mammal-typical golden hue during the summer months to a vivid liquescent blue during the winter months, only to reverse its reflecting properties again with the onset of summer [2]. Tapeta enhance visual sensitivity under low light levels and are therefore widespread among nocturnal animals, but only those of reindeer are known to change seasonally, and it was this extraordinary plasticity that motivated Fosbury & Jeffery [1] to investigate the underlying mechanisms.
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Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2022
Aeroscapes-dynamic patterns of air speed and direction-form a critical component of landscape eco... more Aeroscapes-dynamic patterns of air speed and direction-form a critical component of landscape ecology by shaping numerous animal behaviors, including movement, foraging, and social and/or reproductive interactions. Aeroecology is particularly critical for sensory ecology: air is the medium through which many sensory signals and cues propagate, inherently linking sensory perception to variables such as air speed and turbulence. Yet, aeroscapes are seldom explicitly considered in studies of sensory ecology and evolution. A key first step towards this goal is to describe the aeroscapes of habitats. Here, we quantify the variation in air movement in two successional stages (early and late) of a tropical dry forest in Costa Rica. We recorded air speeds every 10 seconds at five different heights simultaneously. Average air speeds and turbulence increased with height above the ground, generally peaked midday, and were higher overall at the early successional forest site. These patterns of lower air speed and turbulence at ground level and overnight have important implications for olfactory foraging niches, as chemotaxis is most reliable when air movement is low and steady. We discuss our results in the context of possible selective pressures and observed variation in the foraging ecology, behaviors, and associated morphologies of resident vertebrates, with a focus on mammals. However, these data also have relevance to researchers studying socioecology, invertebrate biology, plant evolution, community ecology and more. Further investigation into how animals use different forest types, canopy heights and partition activities across different times of day will further inform our understanding of how landscape and sensory ecology are interrelated. Finally, we emphasize the timeliness of monitoring aeroecology as global wind patterns shift with climate change and human disturbance alters forest structure, which may have important downstream consequences for biological conservation.
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Nature, 2021
Bipedal trackways discovered in 1978 at Laetoli site G, Tanzania and dated to 3.66 million years ... more Bipedal trackways discovered in 1978 at Laetoli site G, Tanzania and dated to 3.66 million years ago are widely accepted as the oldest unequivocal evidence of obligate bipedalism in the human lineage1–3. Another trackway discovered two years earlier at nearby site A was partially excavated and attributed to a hominin, but curious affinities with bears (ursids) marginalized its importance to the paleoanthropological community, and the location of these footprints fell into obscurity3–5. In 2019, we located, excavated and cleaned the site A trackway, producing a digital archive using 3D photogrammetry and laser scanning. Here we compare the footprints at this site with those of American black bears, chimpanzees and humans, and we show that they resemble those of hominins more than ursids. In fact, the narrow step width corroborates the original interpretation of a small, cross-stepping bipedal hominin. However, the inferred foot proportions, gait parameters and 3D morphologies of footprints at site A are readily distinguished from those at site G, indicating that a minimum of two hominin taxa with different feet and gaits coexisted at Laetoli.
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Evolutionary Anthropology, 2021
Grit is implicated in several biological phenomena-it wears teeth, it fractures teeth, it drives ... more Grit is implicated in several biological phenomena-it wears teeth, it fractures teeth, it drives tooth evolution, it elicits complex manual manipulations-any one of which could be described as a central topic in evolutionary anthropology. But what is grit? We hardly know because we tend to privilege the consequences of grit (it is abrasive) over its formal features, all but ignoring crucial variables such as mineral composition, material properties, and particle geometry (size, angularity), not to mention natural variation in the habitats of primates and their food surfaces. Few topics have animated so much debate and invited such cool indifference at the same time. Our goal here is to shine a light on grit, to put a philosophical lens on the nature of our discourse, and to call attention to large empirical voids that should be filled and folded into our understanding of primate natural history and evolution.
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Scientific American, 2021
Studies of living and mummified baboons hint at why ancient Egyptians revered these pesky primate... more Studies of living and mummified baboons hint at why ancient Egyptians revered these pesky primates and reveal the probable location of a fabled kingdom
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People and Nature, 2021
1. Desert locusts Schistocerca gregaria are threatening the food security of millions of people a... more 1. Desert locusts Schistocerca gregaria are threatening the food security of millions of people and devastating economies in eastern Africa and northern India. The ongoing outbreak is the largest in seven decades.
2. These events give us cause to reflect on the natural history of locusts, our fraught relationship with them, and how they are represented in American popular culture and others.
3. Symbolic representations span millennia and most have roots in the natural life cycle of locusts—they transform, they swarm, they devastate specific food crops. There is strong tendency to exaggerate the body size of locusts and the effectiveness of control efforts. Expressions of human futility are rare except in the form of ironic humour.
4. We conclude by suggesting that we humans indulge in hyperbole and humour to normalize and inure ourselves to the psychologically unbearable, and that this tendency is a precondition for the techno-optimism that drives anti-locust technologies.
5. There is no substitute for effective monitoring and management programs, but the importance of new and emerging anti-locust technologies is expected to increase with projections of increased cyclone activity in the northern Indian Ocean.
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South African Journal of Science, 2021
Mechanical loading of finger bones (phalanges) can induce angular curvature, which benefits arbor... more Mechanical loading of finger bones (phalanges) can induce angular curvature, which benefits arboreal primates by dissipating forces and economising the recruitment of muscles during climbing. The recent discovery of extremely curved phalanges in a hominin, Homo naledi, is puzzling, for it suggests life in an arboreal milieu, or, alternatively, habitual climbing on vertical rock surfaces. The importance of climbing rock walls is attested by several populations of baboons, one of which uses a 7-m vertical surface to enter and exit Dronkvlei Cave, De Hoop Nature Reserve, South Africa. This rock surface is an attractive model for estimating the probability of extreme mechanical loading on the phalanges of rock-climbing primates. Here we use three-dimensional photogrammetry to show that 82-91% of the climbable surface would generate high forces on the flexor tendon pulley system and severely load the phalanges of baboons and H. naledi. If such proportions are representative of vertical rock surfaces elsewhere, it may be sufficient to induce stress-mitigating curvature in the phalanges of primates. Significance: • We present the first three-dimensional photogrammetric analysis of a vertical rock surface climbed by a non-human primate, the chacma baboon (Papio ursinus). • Our results show that a large proportion of a vertical rock wall would compel crimp and slope hand positions during climbing-grips that could explain the extraordinary phalangeal curvature expressed by a Middle Pleistocene hominin, Homo naledi.
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Papers by Nathaniel J Dominy
2. Debate revolves around the amorphous silica bodies (phytoliths) present in plants and the various forms of siliceous grit—that is, crystalline quartz (sand, soil, dust)—on plant surfaces. The problem is that conventional measures of sil- ica often quantify both particle types simultaneously.
3. Here we describe a protocol that relies on heavy-liquid flotation to separate and quantify siliceous particulate matter in the diets of herbivores. The method is reproducible and well suited to detecting species- or population-level differ- ences in silica ingestion. In addition, we detected meaningful variation within the digestive tracts of cows, an outcome that supports the premise of ruminal fluid ‘washing’ of siliceous grit.
4. We used bootstrap resampling to estimate the sample sizes needed to compare species, populations or individuals in space and time. We found that a minimum sample of 12 individuals is necessary if the species is a browser or as many as 55 if the species is a grazer, which are more variable. But a sample size of 20 is adequate for detecting statistical differences. We conclude by suggesting that our protocol for differentiating and quantifying silica holds promise for testing competing hypotheses on the evolution of dental traits.
2. These events give us cause to reflect on the natural history of locusts, our fraught relationship with them, and how they are represented in American popular culture and others.
3. Symbolic representations span millennia and most have roots in the natural life cycle of locusts—they transform, they swarm, they devastate specific food crops. There is strong tendency to exaggerate the body size of locusts and the effectiveness of control efforts. Expressions of human futility are rare except in the form of ironic humour.
4. We conclude by suggesting that we humans indulge in hyperbole and humour to normalize and inure ourselves to the psychologically unbearable, and that this tendency is a precondition for the techno-optimism that drives anti-locust technologies.
5. There is no substitute for effective monitoring and management programs, but the importance of new and emerging anti-locust technologies is expected to increase with projections of increased cyclone activity in the northern Indian Ocean.
2. Debate revolves around the amorphous silica bodies (phytoliths) present in plants and the various forms of siliceous grit—that is, crystalline quartz (sand, soil, dust)—on plant surfaces. The problem is that conventional measures of sil- ica often quantify both particle types simultaneously.
3. Here we describe a protocol that relies on heavy-liquid flotation to separate and quantify siliceous particulate matter in the diets of herbivores. The method is reproducible and well suited to detecting species- or population-level differ- ences in silica ingestion. In addition, we detected meaningful variation within the digestive tracts of cows, an outcome that supports the premise of ruminal fluid ‘washing’ of siliceous grit.
4. We used bootstrap resampling to estimate the sample sizes needed to compare species, populations or individuals in space and time. We found that a minimum sample of 12 individuals is necessary if the species is a browser or as many as 55 if the species is a grazer, which are more variable. But a sample size of 20 is adequate for detecting statistical differences. We conclude by suggesting that our protocol for differentiating and quantifying silica holds promise for testing competing hypotheses on the evolution of dental traits.
2. These events give us cause to reflect on the natural history of locusts, our fraught relationship with them, and how they are represented in American popular culture and others.
3. Symbolic representations span millennia and most have roots in the natural life cycle of locusts—they transform, they swarm, they devastate specific food crops. There is strong tendency to exaggerate the body size of locusts and the effectiveness of control efforts. Expressions of human futility are rare except in the form of ironic humour.
4. We conclude by suggesting that we humans indulge in hyperbole and humour to normalize and inure ourselves to the psychologically unbearable, and that this tendency is a precondition for the techno-optimism that drives anti-locust technologies.
5. There is no substitute for effective monitoring and management programs, but the importance of new and emerging anti-locust technologies is expected to increase with projections of increased cyclone activity in the northern Indian Ocean.