C L Nunn
Biographic Data
| ID | 24890 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C L Nunn |
| GIVEN NAMES | C L |
| FAMILY NAME | Nunn |
| SIGNATURE | NUNN C L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Duke University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9330-2873 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 104 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Spreading potential in disease relevant networks
Heterogeneity in contact patterns can have marked effects on disease transmission, including through superspreading where few individuals drive most infections. Networks based on different types of human-human contacts quantify individuals’ centrality, which can be used to identify individuals or sub-populations who are at increased risk of spreading disease. By understanding the predictors of centrality, high-risk individuals and sub-populations…
One Health Disparities and Blastocystis infection among smallholder farmers in northeastern Madagascar
Blastocystis is a globally transmitted gastrointestinal protozoa that commonly infects people living in low- and middle-income countries. Transmission is thought to occur via consumption of contaminated water or food and through contact with infected animals, although the specific factors that influence infection in low-resource, rural settings remain unclear. We applied a One Health Disparities framework that considers the interconnectedness of …
Gibbon sleep quantified
Water Availability Impacts Habitat Use by Red-Fronted Lemurs (Eulemur rufifrons)
Eulerian videography technology improves classification of sleep architecture in primates
The changing ecology of primate parasites
Host movements, including migrations or range expansions, are known to influence parasite communities. Transitions to captivity—a rarely studied yet widespread human‐driven host movement—can also change parasite communities, in some cases leading to pathogen spillover among wildlife species, or between wildlife and human hosts. We compared parasite species richness between wild and captive populations of 22 primate species, including macro‐ (helm…
Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) Group Sleep and Pathogen-Vector Avoidance
Speeding in the slow lane
The cost of deep sleep
OBJECTIVES: Primates spend almost half their lives asleep, yet we know little about how evolution has shaped variation in the duration or intensity of sleep (i.e., sleep regulation) across primate species. Our objective was to test hypotheses related to how sleeping site security influences sleep intensity in different lemur species. METHODS: We used actigraphy and infrared videography to generate sleep measures in 100 individuals (males = 51, fe…
Sleep in a comparative context
OBJECTIVES: Primates vary in their sleep durations and, remarkably, humans sleep the least per 24-hr period of the 30 primates that have been studied. Using phylogenetic methods that quantitatively situate human phenotypes within a broader primate comparative context, we investigated the evolution of human sleep architecture, focusing on: total sleep duration, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep duration, non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep duration, …
Segmented sleep in a nonelectric, small‐scale agricultural society in Madagascar
OBJECTIVES: We studied sleep in a rural population in Madagascar to (i) characterize sleep in an equatorial small-scale agricultural population without electricity, (ii) assess whether sleep is linked to noise levels in a dense population, and (iii) examine the effects of experimentally introduced artificial light on sleep timing. METHODS: Using actigraphy, sleep-wake patterns were analyzed for both daytime napping and nighttime wakefulness in 21…
Activity patterns in seven captive lemur species
Cathemerality, or activity throughout the 24-hr cycle, is rare in primates yet relatively common among lemurs. However, the diverse ecological conditions under which cathemerality is expressed complicates attempts to identify species-typical behavior. For example, Lemur catta and Varecia have historically been described as diurnal, yet recent studies suggest that they might exhibit cathemeral behavior under some conditions. To investigate this va…
Hadza sleep biology
OBJECTIVES: Cross-cultural sleep research is critical to deciphering whether modern sleep expression is the product of recent selective pressures, or an example of evolutionary mismatch to ancestral sleep ecology. We worked with the Hadza, an equatorial, hunter-gatherer community in Tanzania, to better understand ancestral sleep patterns and to test hypotheses related to sleep segmentation. METHODS: We used actigraphy to analyze sleep-wake patter…
Transparency, usability, and reproducibility
Recent decades have seen rapid development of new analytical methods to investigate patterns of interspecific variation. Yet these cutting‐edge statistical analyses often rely on data of questionable origin, varying accuracy, and weak comparability, which seem to have reduced the reproducibility of studies. It is time to improve the transparency of comparative data while also making these improved data more widely available. We, the authors, met …
Assessing sources of error in comparative analyses of primate behavior
Sleep intensity and the evolution of human cognition
Over the past four decades, scientists have made substantial progress in understanding the evolution of sleep patterns across the Tree of Life. Remarkably, the specifics of sleep along the human lineage have been slow to emerge. This is surprising, given our unique mental and behavioral capacity and the importance of sleep for individual cognitive performance. One view is that our species' sleep architecture is in accord with patterns documented …
Connecting evolution, medicine, and public health
Mating Competition, Promiscuity, and Life History Traits as Predictors of Sexually Transmitted Disease Risk in Primates
Cultural inheritance or cultural diffusion of religious violence? A quantitative case study of the Radical Reformation
Religion throughout the historical record is consistently associated with large-scale cooperative activities. These cooperative activities sometimes involve coordinated acts of violence, particularly against religious out-groups. Using phylogenetic and social network analyses, we investigated whether religious violence is inherited from parent congregations or is acquired from contemporaneous purveyors of violent ideologies. We examined these que…
Pathogen Flow
Primate Disease Ecology in Comparative and Theoretical Perspective
Infectious disease plays a major role in the lives of wild primates, and the past decade has witnessed significant strides in our understanding of primate disease ecology. In this review, I briefly describe some key findings from phylogenetic comparative approaches, focusing on analyses of parasite richness that use the Global Mammal Parasite Database . While these studies have provided new answers to fundamental questions, new questions have ari…
Innovative Approaches to the Relationship Between Diet and Mandibular Morphology in Primates
Evolutionary disequilibrium and activity period in primates
Activity period plays a central role in studies of primate origins and adaptations, yet fundamental questions remain concerning the evolutionary history of primate activity period. Lemurs are of particular interest because they display marked variation in activity period, with some species exhibiting completely nocturnal or diurnal lifestyles, and others distributing activity throughout the 24‐h cycle (i.e., cathemerality). Some lines of evidence…
The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology
The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology
Innovative Approaches to the Relationship Between Diet and Mandibular Morphology in Primates
Sleep in a comparative context
OBJECTIVES: Primates vary in their sleep durations and, remarkably, humans sleep the least per 24-hr period of the 30 primates that have been studied. Using phylogenetic methods that quantitatively situate human phenotypes within a broader primate comparative context, we investigated the evolution of human sleep architecture, focusing on: total sleep duration, rapid eye movement (REM) sleep duration, non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep duration, …
Integrative approaches to the study of primate infectious disease
The close phylogenetic relationship between humans and nonhuman primates, coupled with the exponential expansion of human populations and human activities within primate habitats, has resulted in exceptionally high potential for pathogen exchange. Emerging infectious diseases are a consequence of this process that has the capacity to threaten global health and drive primate population declines. Integration of standardized empirical data collectio…
Hadza sleep biology
OBJECTIVES: Cross-cultural sleep research is critical to deciphering whether modern sleep expression is the product of recent selective pressures, or an example of evolutionary mismatch to ancestral sleep ecology. We worked with the Hadza, an equatorial, hunter-gatherer community in Tanzania, to better understand ancestral sleep patterns and to test hypotheses related to sleep segmentation. METHODS: We used actigraphy to analyze sleep-wake patter…
The global mammal parasite database
Assessing sources of error in comparative analyses of primate behavior
Evolutionary disequilibrium and activity period in primates
Activity period plays a central role in studies of primate origins and adaptations, yet fundamental questions remain concerning the evolutionary history of primate activity period. Lemurs are of particular interest because they display marked variation in activity period, with some species exhibiting completely nocturnal or diurnal lifestyles, and others distributing activity throughout the 24‐h cycle (i.e., cathemerality). Some lines of evidence…
Comparative Methods for Studying Cultural Trait Evolution
Anthropologists and archaeologists increasingly use phylogenetic methods to test hypotheses involving cross-cultural traits, but the appropriateness of applying tree-based methods to analyze cultural traits is unclear. The authors developed a spatially explicit computer simulation model to investigate trait evolution in relation to phylogeny and geography and used the simulation to assess the sensitivity of two comparative methods (independent co…
Economic Problems of Agriculture in Industrial Societies
Speeding in the slow lane
Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) Group Sleep and Pathogen-Vector Avoidance
The cost of deep sleep
OBJECTIVES: Primates spend almost half their lives asleep, yet we know little about how evolution has shaped variation in the duration or intensity of sleep (i.e., sleep regulation) across primate species. Our objective was to test hypotheses related to how sleeping site security influences sleep intensity in different lemur species. METHODS: We used actigraphy and infrared videography to generate sleep measures in 100 individuals (males = 51, fe…
Mating Competition, Promiscuity, and Life History Traits as Predictors of Sexually Transmitted Disease Risk in Primates
Economic Problems of Agriculture in Industrial Societies
Sex and social evolution in primates
Introduction Life history and male infanticide risk Infanticide by males unlikely or unable to have fathered a female's current dependent offspring is an adaptive male reproductive strategy if the mother can soon be fertilised again and the infanticidal male is in a position to be the likely sire of her next infant (Hrdy, 1979; Hrdy, Janson and van Schaik, 1995). It is remarkably common among primates (Hausfater and Hrdy, 1984; Struhsaker and Lel…
The evolution of exaggerated sexual swellings in primates and the graded-signal hypothesis
Infanticide by Males and its Implications
Male primates, carnivores and rodents sometimes kill infants that they did not sire. Infanticide by males is a relatively common phenomenon in these groups, but tends to be rare in any given species. Is this behavior pathological or accidental, or does it reflect a conditional reproductive strategy for males in certain circumstances? In this book, case studies and reviews confirm the adaptive nature of infanticide in males in primates, and help t…
Comparative methods for studying primate adaptation and allometry
In this article, we review developments in comparative methodology that have emerged in the last fifteen years, with particular emphasis on the importance of incorporating phylogeny into comparative studies. We define "comparative study" as meaning analysis of trait variation across rather than within species, with the aim of testing hypotheses or generating new ones. We provide information on how to implement phylogenetic comparative methods, in…
A Comparative Approach to Reconstructing the Socioecology of Extinct Primates
The global mammal parasite database
Infectious Diseases in Primates
An advanced textbook suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in the fields of behavioural ecology, primatology, conservation biology, biological anthropology, public health and wildlife epidemiology.
Cultural macroevolution and the transmission of traits
Cultural traits are distributed across human societies in a patterned way. Study of the mechanisms whereby cultural traits persist and change over time is key to understanding human cultural diversity. For more than a century, a central question has engaged anthropologists interested in the study of cultural trait variation: What is the source of cultural variation? More precisely, are cultural traits transmitted primarily from ancestral to desce…
Comparative Methods for Studying Cultural Trait Evolution
Anthropologists and archaeologists increasingly use phylogenetic methods to test hypotheses involving cross-cultural traits, but the appropriateness of applying tree-based methods to analyze cultural traits is unclear. The authors developed a spatially explicit computer simulation model to investigate trait evolution in relation to phylogeny and geography and used the simulation to assess the sensitivity of two comparative methods (independent co…
Integrative approaches to the study of primate infectious disease
The close phylogenetic relationship between humans and nonhuman primates, coupled with the exponential expansion of human populations and human activities within primate habitats, has resulted in exceptionally high potential for pathogen exchange. Emerging infectious diseases are a consequence of this process that has the capacity to threaten global health and drive primate population declines. Integration of standardized empirical data collectio…
Examining Landscape Factors Influencing Relative Distribution of Mosquito Genera and Frequency of Virus Infection
Mosquito-borne infections cause some of the most debilitating human diseases, including yellow fever and malaria, yet we lack an understanding of how disease risk scales with human-driven habitat changes. We present an approach to study variation in mosquito distribution and concomitant viral infections on the landscape level. In a pilot study we analyzed mosquito distribution along a 10-km transect of a West African rainforest area, which includ…
The 10kTrees website
The comparative method plays a central role in efforts to uncover the adaptive basis for primate behaviors, morphological traits, and cognitive abilities.1-4 The comparative method has been used, for example, to infer that living in a larger group selects for a larger neocortex,5, 6 that primate territoriality favors a longer day range relative to home range size,7 and that sperm competition can account for the evolution of primate testes size.8,…
The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology
The Comparative Approach in Evolutionary Anthropology and Biology
Pathogen Flow
Primate Disease Ecology in Comparative and Theoretical Perspective
Infectious disease plays a major role in the lives of wild primates, and the past decade has witnessed significant strides in our understanding of primate disease ecology. In this review, I briefly describe some key findings from phylogenetic comparative approaches, focusing on analyses of parasite richness that use the Global Mammal Parasite Database . While these studies have provided new answers to fundamental questions, new questions have ari…
Innovative Approaches to the Relationship Between Diet and Mandibular Morphology in Primates
Evolutionary disequilibrium and activity period in primates
Activity period plays a central role in studies of primate origins and adaptations, yet fundamental questions remain concerning the evolutionary history of primate activity period. Lemurs are of particular interest because they display marked variation in activity period, with some species exhibiting completely nocturnal or diurnal lifestyles, and others distributing activity throughout the 24‐h cycle (i.e., cathemerality). Some lines of evidence…
Cultural inheritance or cultural diffusion of religious violence? A quantitative case study of the Radical Reformation
Religion throughout the historical record is consistently associated with large-scale cooperative activities. These cooperative activities sometimes involve coordinated acts of violence, particularly against religious out-groups. Using phylogenetic and social network analyses, we investigated whether religious violence is inherited from parent congregations or is acquired from contemporaneous purveyors of violent ideologies. We examined these que…
Mating Competition, Promiscuity, and Life History Traits as Predictors of Sexually Transmitted Disease Risk in Primates
Sleep intensity and the evolution of human cognition
Over the past four decades, scientists have made substantial progress in understanding the evolution of sleep patterns across the Tree of Life. Remarkably, the specifics of sleep along the human lineage have been slow to emerge. This is surprising, given our unique mental and behavioral capacity and the importance of sleep for individual cognitive performance. One view is that our species' sleep architecture is in accord with patterns documented …
Connecting evolution, medicine, and public health
Transparency, usability, and reproducibility
Recent decades have seen rapid development of new analytical methods to investigate patterns of interspecific variation. Yet these cutting‐edge statistical analyses often rely on data of questionable origin, varying accuracy, and weak comparability, which seem to have reduced the reproducibility of studies. It is time to improve the transparency of comparative data while also making these improved data more widely available. We, the authors, met …
Assessing sources of error in comparative analyses of primate behavior
Biology (29 works) · Primate Behavior and Ecology (21 works) · Ecology (16 works) · Evolutionary biology (14 works) · Ecology (12 works) · Primate (12 works) · Zoology (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Wildlife Ecology and Conservation (9 works) · Sociology (8 works)