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...

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 !!

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

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....

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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/...

@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

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?