Latest News

Congrats to Sonia who will join the group in Dec 2020 as a PhD student, thanks to Julien Renoult's ANR (Wildcom)

Congrats to Serge-Ely who succesfully defended his PhD in Franceville, Gabon (March 2020)!

Congrats to Axelle and Nikos who joined the group in Oct 2019 as PhD students

Latest findings

Kin recognition

Using AI (deep neural networks), we show that paternal half-sisters resemble more to each other than maternal half-sisters suggesting selection for increased resemblance to facilitate discrimination among paternal relatives.
See the recent publication here and how it was broadcasted.

unconditional care from kin

Close maternal kin do not avoid each other when contagious as they do with unrelated groupmates. See the recent publication here and our press release.

neopterin as a useful biomarker?

We raise questions regarding the relevance of fecal neopterin to reveal individual differences in
the immune system of healthy primates. See here for more information.

grooming and protozoa

Parasitized mandrills are less groomed than healthy ones and their fecal material smells bad - Find out more here and see the original publication

telomeres and leucocytes

Seasonal variation in telomere length mirrors changes in lymphocyte proportion - See the original publication

Movements  and nematodes

Parasites influence mandrills' movements - Picture:  home range and recursion sites (rainy season 2013-2014). Utilization distribution (red and yellow variations) is based on GPS data. Red indicate high utilization.
Our article is now in press

If you want to learn more about the Mandrillus Project or help maintain the long term field project, please visit this website

Photo credits: Berta Roura-Torres, Paul Amblard-Rambert, Nory El Ksabi, Alice Percher, Pierre-Hadrien Pottier, Marie Charpentier, Timo Brockmeyer, Benoit Quintard, Michel Halbwax