Happy to share my new paper on the nutritional ecology of elephants🌿🐘 Should elephants graze or browse? The nutritional and functional consequences of dietary variation in a mixed-feeding megaherbivore royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... @ncbsbangalore.bsky.social @royalsocietypublishing.org

Congratulations to Dr @euantheyoung.bsky.social who defended his PhD yesterday on 'Family matters: The role of trade-offs in shaping human life-histories and health' research.rug.nl/en/publicati... @rug.nl supervised with @erikpostma.bsky.social @lummaalab.bsky.social 🎉

There is another Masters project in our group: Examining the influence of climate on births in the Asian elephant 🐘🐘🐘 More details on both these projects at sfecologie.org/offre/examin... sfecologie.org/offre/fitnes...

Lummaa Lab@lummaalab.bsky.social · 9mo ago

We are looking for a Masters student for an exciting project! Fitness consequences of cumulative silver-spoon 🥄🥄 effects in a long-lived mammal. Study system could be humans 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 or elephants 🐘🐘 depending on your interest. ✉️ @hansraj88.bsky.social @axdela.bsky.social @nikos.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy

We are looking for a Masters student for an exciting project! Fitness consequences of cumulative silver-spoon 🥄🥄 effects in a long-lived mammal. Study system could be humans 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 or elephants 🐘🐘 depending on your interest. ✉️ @hansraj88.bsky.social @axdela.bsky.social @nikos.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy

Gorillas likely experience menopause, according to an analysis of over 30 years of data from wild mountain gorillas in Uganda, which shows that females can live for a decade or more after their last baby. In PNAS: https://ow.ly/kxyz50Xf1ER

Another ape with post-reproductive lifespan and likely menopause! @pnas.org @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social (and another gorilla paper from our own @nikos.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy ) Female gorillas can live >10y after their last birth, representing at least a fourth of their adult lifespan !!

Nikos Smit@nikos.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy · 10mo ago

Wild female gorillas live long after their last baby is born. Do they go through menopause? https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2510998122

We have several open MSc thesis projects! Here is one of those:

Nikos Smit@nikos.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy · 10mo ago

MSc thesis! How does distance to kin influences adult survival?

1. My first ever paper is out! With @euantheyoung.bsky.social @lummaalab.bsky.social @erikpostma.bsky.social @hannahdugdale.bsky.social How do older siblings, and their sex and age, affect the survival of younger siblings? Find out by checking below. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Age- and sex-dependent associations between the number of older siblings and early-life survival in pre-industrial humans | Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Siblings are an important part of an individual’s early-life environment and may therefore play an important role in shaping an individual’s survival. The quantification of sibling effects on survival is challenging, however, especially in long-lived ...

royalsocietypublishing.org

Absolutely thrilled to have my first paper be given a @nature.com research highlight! 🥳 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Will a child survive? Older siblings have a powerful influence

Swiss birth data from 1750 to 1870 reveal that girls who had lots of older brothers close to their own age were less likely to survive than were those who did not.

nature.com

Who’s got the power? Studies of male and female primates show it’s not simple https://theconversation.com/whos-got-the-power-studies-of-male-and-female-primates-show-its-not-simple-263292

Who’s got the power? Studies of male and female primates show it’s not simple

Most primate societies do not have clear-cut sex-biases when it comes to power.

theconversation.com

Female mountain gorillas can outrank males twice their size... ...and exhibit priority of access to resources over these males Article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982225008723 Press release: https://www.mpg.de/25119311/0730-evan-it-s-not-just-about-size-150495-x

🦍 What drives female gorillas to pick fights? A long-term study reveals that aggression isn’t just about dominance. Pregnancy, group size, and male presence also shift the dynamics of who targets whom. buff.ly/Lh1fImW

Risk-taking incentives predict aggression heuristics in female gorillas

Altmetric provides a collated score for online attention across various platforms and media.See more details

elifesciences.org

Individual circumstances & social context influence the aggressive behaviour of female #gorillas towards group members. New study by Nikolaos Smit & Martha Robbins now out in @elife.bsky.social. @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social @utu.fi More: tinyurl.com/3baw5dr7 & elifesciences.org/reviewed-pre...

Gorillas’ personal circumstances shape their aggression towards groupmates

Animals can adapt the direction of aggression to more or less powerful rivals to suit their individual needs and social contexts

tinyurl.com

Another cool study 👇🏼coming from @lummaalab.bsky.social, this time by Veera Schroderus 🎣📖🧶🪡🇫🇮

EMPSEB 31@empseb.bsky.social · last yr.

Next talk in Session 5B belonged to Veera Schroderus. She introduced us her interesting research regarding the importance of social networks and hobbies in human health.🧶🎣🌱

Elisabeth Maaria Mikkonen @lummaalab.bsky.social is studying the determinants of milk cortisol concentrations in *semi* captive elephants from Myanmar 🐘🍼 #EMPSEB30

Eiliseltä: Tuhat kilometriä mummolaan – sukulaisten vaikutusta hyvinvointiin tutkitaan ensimmäistä kertaa alueellisesta näkökulmasta

Tuhat kilometriä mummolaan – sukulaisten vaikutusta hyvinvointiin tutkitaan ensimmäistä kertaa alueellisesta näkökulmasta

Pitkien välimatkojen maassa kaupungistuminen erottaa sukupolvia toisistaan. Miten se vaikuttaa lähteneiden ja jääneiden hyvinvointiin? Professori Virpi Lummaa tutkii suomalaisten sukulaisverkostojen vaikutusta hyvinvointiin alueellisesta näkökulmasta.

ku.fi

A new review paper from our newest lab member! Strategies, costs and counter-strategies to sexual coercion. 2025. Smit N onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Strategies, costs and counter‐strategies to sexual coercion

Sexual conflict, the conflict between the evolutionary interests of females and males over mating, occasionally results in the evolution of traits favourable for one sex and adverse for the other. In....

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

@melissa-gagniere.bsky.social presented her PhD work at the Aura symposium. She works on 🦊🦡🦝 behavior following an urban gradient in Finland. Follow her for more update to come or even to participate in her study!

Super proud of our PhD @markspa.bsky.social who was practicing his talk for the Aura symposium next week in Turku. Mark will tell how studying former diseases spread can tell us about future epidemics. #humanhealth #historicaldata #humanresearch

Even highly successful vaccine mandates insufficiently reach lower socioeconomic groups. Check out the latest research of our Human Evolutionary Health team on vaccination in historical Finns, jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... #PublicHealth #Vaccines #Mandates

Socioeconomic Differences in Vaccination After a Historical Vaccination Mandate

This population-based cohort study examines the association of an 1883 mandatory vaccination law with vaccine coverage rates among infants aged less than 1 year in Finland from 1855 to 1900.

jamanetwork.com

1/11 New preprint out with @hannahdugdale.bsky.social, @lummaalab.bsky.social, and @erikpostma.bsky.social: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... Why do we age? And can a “natural experiment” during the Great Finnish Famine with long-term data help provide some answers?