Dear All, This Wednesday (4pm) we have a seminar led by Berta Roura-Torres (Georg-August University Göttingen) entitled "Early challenges shape fitness trajectories in mandrills" (abstract below). The meeting will be held online (link below). Abstract: Adverse events during early life that reduce access to resources or hinder their allocation can have lasting effects on health, survival, and reproduction in mammals, including humans, and the accumulation of such challenges often has stronger consequences than single events. Using a 12-year dataset from a wild population of mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx), a cercopithecine primate, we examined how early life adversity (ELA) influences survival during infancy (under 1 year) and juvenility (1–4 years), female age at first reproduction, and male age at dispersal. We identified seven types of adversity, covering maternal, social, environmental, and demographic factors, and analyzed both their cumulative and individual effects. Infant survival was affected solely by maternal loss, with cumulative ELA showing no impact. Female reproductive timing responded to specific early-life conditions: individuals with a closely spaced younger sibling, born to low-ranking mothers, born in years with reduced rainfall, or with higher cumulative ELA reproduced later, whereas females born to primiparous mothers reproduced earlier. In contrast, male age at dispersal showed no effect of ELA. Overall, these findings indicate that cumulative adversity does not consistently shape survival in mandrills, but it can influence female reproductive timing. They further suggest that the consequences of early-life challenges vary across life-history traits and sexes, with particular conditions sometimes playing a larger role than the accumulation of adversity in shaping fitness. Finally, this talk presents preliminary results on early physical development during infancy, obtained using an innovative non-invasive approach based on a trained AI model applied to photographic portrait, which may represent a potential pathway linking ELA to later-life survival and reproductive outcomes. Link to the meeting: BERG research seminars | Meeting-Join | Microsoft Teams<https://eur03.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2F… BERG seminar schedule (Spring 2025) Date Speaker Affiliation Talk title Chair 4-Feb-26 Berta Roura-Torres Georg-August University Göttingen Early challenges shape fitness trajectories in mandrills Pawel 11-Feb-26 Dylan Feldmeier University of Oxford The Global Threat of Wire Snare Poaching: Impacts and Research Priorities Pawel 18-Feb-26 Ashleigh Messenger University of Stirling TBC. Ring-tailed lemur personality and welfare Pawel 25-Feb-26 Floriane Fournier Université Jean Monnet TBC. Nonlinear phenomena in vocal emotional expression and perception in bonobos Pawel 4-Mar-26 MID SEMESTER BREAK 11-Mar-26 IMPACT meeting Impact research catch up Pawel 18-Mar-26 Robert Aitchison University of Stirling TBC. Carrion crow vocal behaviour Pawel 25-Mar-26 Janie Fink University of St Andrews; University of California Davis TBC. Comparative cognition, bee cognition Pawel 1-Apr-26 Maleen Thiele Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology TBC Alex 8-Apr-26 Stephan Kaufhold Univesity of California, San Diego TBC Alex 29-Apr-26 Patrick Allsop Bangor University TBC. Zanzibar red colobus, human-wildlife conflict Pawel Best wishes, Pawel ------------------------------- Dr Pawel Fedurek (he/his) Lecturer in Psychology Behaviour and Evolution Research Group (BERG) Division of Psychology, Faculty of Natural Sciences University of Stirling Stirling, FK9 4LA Scotland, UK @pawel-fedurek<https://bsky.app/profile/pawel-fedurek.bsky.social> @berg-stirling<https://bsky.app/profile/berg-stirling.bsky.social> Staff page<https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/1080868> | BERG page<https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/faculties/natural-sciences/our-research/research-groups/behaviour-and-evolution-research-group/> I aim to reply within 3 working days (my working days are between Monday and Friday). ________________________________ Scotland’s University for Sporting Excellence The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159