Hurricane Maria destroyed 63% of vegetation on Cayo Santiago.
Credit: Lauren Brent
The childish notion of human exceptionalism took another blow recently when a group of researchers showed how macaque monkeys can change their culture to adapt to changes in their environment.
As with humans, macaque cultural ethics is an agreed standard of behaviour that enables the group to remain cohesive and survive in adversity. Unlike creationists, macaques don't require a handbook to know how to behave decently towards others because, like normal humans, they too have empathy and will treat others as they would want to be treated.
This was illustrated recently when macaques were seen to change their behaviour when hurricane Maria destroyed the 63% of the vegetation on their home island of Cayo Santiago, reducing the amount of shelter from the heat of the sun.
What information do you have on the effects of hurricane Maria on the Puerto Rican island of Cayo Santiago in 2017? Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm, had devastating effects on the Puerto Rican island of Cayo Santiago in 2017. Here are some key points about the impact:This was observed in a study led by the universities of Pennsylvania and Exeter and published in the journal Science. How they carried out the study is explained in a University of Exeter news release:
Overall, Hurricane Maria had a profound and lasting impact on Cayo Santiago, significantly disrupting research activities and altering the island's ecosystem. The resilience of both the human and monkey populations, along with support from the scientific community, played a crucial role in the ongoing recovery process.
- Destruction of Infrastructure: The hurricane caused extensive damage to the island’s infrastructure, including the research facilities used by scientists studying the population of rhesus macaques. The storm destroyed housing, laboratories, and the dock.
- Impact on Research: Cayo Santiago is known for its long-term research on rhesus macaques, which have been studied for decades. The destruction of research facilities and interruption of scientific studies had significant consequences for ongoing research projects.
- Effect on the Monkey Population: While many rhesus macaques survived the hurricane, the storm altered their habitat and food sources. Researchers observed changes in the monkeys' behavior and social structures as they adapted to the post-hurricane environment.
- Recovery Efforts: Efforts to rebuild and restore research facilities began soon after the hurricane. Scientists and volunteers worked to re-establish basic infrastructure, provide food and medical care to the monkey population, and continue their research under challenging conditions.
- Environmental Changes: The natural landscape of Cayo Santiago was heavily affected. Trees were uprooted, and vegetation was stripped away, which changed the ecological balance of the island. This had a lasting impact on both the monkey population and the overall environment of the island.
- Scientific Community Support: The global scientific community rallied to support the recovery of Cayo Santiago. Fundraising and aid were organized to help restore the island’s facilities and ensure the continuation of valuable research.
A devastating hurricane transformed a monkey society by changing the pros and cons of interacting with others, new research shows.Sadly, the team's paper in Science is behind a paywall, so only the abstract is freely available:
Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, killing more than 3,000 people. It also destroyed 63% of vegetation on Cayo Santiago (also known as Monkey Island), which is home to a population of rhesus macaques.
Even now, tree cover remains far below pre-hurricane levels and – in this hot part of the world – that makes shade a scarce and precious resource for the macaques.
The new study, led by the universities of Pennsylvania and Exeter and published in the journal Science, shows the storm damage altered the evolutionary benefits of tolerating others and sharing shade – giving a survival advantage to tolerant macaques.
With many ecosystems changing rapidly due to human activity, this study is an example of a species adapting its social strategy to survive.
In response to the drastic changes caused by the hurricane, macaques persistently increased tolerance and decreased aggression towards each other. This enabled more macaques to access scarce shade, which is critical for survival.
We examined 10 years of data on the strength and number of macaques’ social ties, before and after the hurricane. Before the hurricane, tolerating others had no impact on risk of death. Afterwards, macaques that displayed more than average social tolerance – and were therefore better able to share shade – were 42% less likely to die than those that were less tolerant.
Dr Camille Testard, Lead author
Department of Neuroscience
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
This represents a sudden change in “selection pressure” – the evolutionary benefits or costs of different traits or behaviours.
Social behaviour was assessed by recording aggression and how often individuals were seen sitting together.
Macaques aren’t the best at sharing resources – be they food or shade. They are well known to live in an aggressive, highly competitive society. But in the heat caused by ecological changes, often around 40C, the macaques had to share space or die.
Professor Lauren Brent, co-author
Centre for Research in Animal Behaviour
University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.Credit Lauren BrentTo access shade, they need to tolerate – and be tolerated by – others, and we found that this tolerance spills over into other daily interactions. Macaques that began sharing shade also spend time together in the mornings, before the day’s heat forces them to seek shade. In effect, the hurricane changed the rules of the game in the monkeys’ society.
Dr Camille Testard,The research team included Arizona State University and New York University.For group-living animals, social relationships may allow them to cope with disturbances in the environment, including human-induced climate change. We were surprised the macaques’ social behaviour was so flexible, making them resilient to this environmental change, but some species may not display this same flexibility.
Professor Lauren Brent.
AbstractThere are two ways to interpret this change in behaviour, neither of them will be any comfort to creationists trying to cling to their daft notion of human exceptionalism and the belief that evolution by natural selection is impossible:
Extreme weather events radically alter ecosystems. When ecological damage persists, selective pressures on individuals can change, leading to phenotypic adjustments. For group-living animals, social relationships may be a mechanism enabling adaptation to ecosystem disturbance. Yet whether such events alter selection on sociality and whether group-living animals can, as a result, adaptively change their social relationships remain untested. We leveraged 10 years of data collected on rhesus macaques before and after a category 4 hurricane caused persistent deforestation, exacerbating monkeys’ exposure to intense heat. In response, macaques demonstrated persistently increased tolerance and decreased aggression toward other monkeys, facilitating access to scarce shade critical for thermoregulation. Social tolerance predicted individual survival after the hurricane, but not before it, revealing a shift in the adaptive function of sociality.
Firstly, it can be seen as macaques understanding the needs of others and knowing that it is in all their interests to cooperate and share a limited but essential resource.
Secondly, this can be seen as the result of intense selection pressure where those who were prepared to tolerate others sharing the resource were the survivors and so passed this behaviour on to their descendants, in classic Darwinian evolution and an example of survival of the fittest.
Whichever of those you choose to accept, there is evidence that cultures and cultural ethics are an evolved feature of society.
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It's very distressing how hurricanes spoil the loveliness of tropical islands. Puerto Rico and its offshore islands in the Caribbean are some of the loveliest places in the world when Nature and human beings aren't ruining it.
ReplyDeleteThe Macaques have learned to cooperate, or they suffer and die. It's either adapt or die. Nature is cruel and alot of humans are cruel(not all of us) and cooperation and adaptability are assets to survival.
I have always loved tropical islands whether it's Puerto Rico, Dominica, Mauritius, Reunion, the Seychelles, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Bali, the Hawaiian islands, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji,Tahiti, Bora Bora, Raiatea, Guam, Kosrae, Yap, the Chuuk islands, and New Caledonia. It's just very unfortunate that Nature has given these places mosquitoes, venomous animals, poisonous plants, unclean water, malaria, dengue fever, hurricanes, tsunamis, typhoons, cyclones, lightning strikes, and volcanic eruptions. And it's a shame how humans have ruined these islands by nuclear testing, motor vehicles, mining, deforestation, pollution. There is no paradise anywhere in the world. There never was.
It's up to decent, intelligent moral folks to make the world a paradise. Religion has utterly failed to do it. Let's support the scientists to make the world a better place.