Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
May 06, 2009

Chimp populations continue to decline in Africa. A new survey of our closest relatives in the Cote D'Ivoire found that the population fell from an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 individuals to a paltry 800 to 1,200, a decline that took place in less than twenty years.

Ecological overlap may increase the risks of microbial exchange between humans and wild non-human primates. Escherichia coli bacteria were collected from chimpanzees and humans in Kibale National Park, western Uganda, in May and June 2004, in order to examine whether interaction between humans and apes in the wild might affect gastrointestinal bacterial communities in the two species. Chimpanzees harbored bacteria genetically more similar to those of humans employed in chimpanzee-directed research and tourism than to those of humans from a local village. Most humans (81.6%) and 4.4% of chimpanzees harbored at least one isolate resistant to locally available antibiotics. In isolates from both humans and chimpanzees, resistance was higher to five of these antibiotics than to Ceftiofur, an antibiotic not available in the region. These data indicate that humans and apes interacting in the wild can share genetically and phenotypically similar gastrointestinal bacteria, presumably originating from common environmental sources. Strategies to limit transmission of pathogens between humans and primates, whether that transmission is direct or indirect, would benefit both human health and primate conservation.