Chewed plants help detect viruses in wild mountain gorillas and monkeys

July 7, 2016 by Kat Kerlin

Chewed bark, leaves and fruit discarded by mountain gorillas provide a simple way to test the endangered apes for viruses without disturbing them, according to scientists from the University of California, Davis, studying mountain gorillas and golden monkeys in East-Central Africa.

The method is described in a study published recently in the American Journal of Primatology. The study is led by UC Davis' One Health Institute and Gorilla Doctors, a program led by the nonprofit Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project and UC Davis.

"This is the first time that viruses have been detected on plants chewed byprimates," said lead author Tierra Smiley Evans, a graduate student at the One Health Institute. "This is a technique people can use without disturbing the primate's natural behaviors."

Keep it simple

Roughly 880 critically endangered mountain gorillas remain in the Virunga Conservation Range, which spans Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in Uganda. Roughly 60 percent of these gorillas are habituated to humans to support ecotourism in the region, putting them at high risk for contacting human pathogens.

Infectious diseases introduced by humans pose one of the greatest threats to survival of great apes in the wild, the study said.

Blood samples, and oral and rectal swabs are often used to detect viruses in primates, but to collect them, primates commonly have to be anesthetized. For the endangered mountain gorillas, anesthesia is only performed when a gorilla is sick or injured due to a human-related cause, not when they are healthy.

Simple, noninvasive sampling methods are needed to monitor the health of the mountain gorillas and other primates, ideally before a virus becomes an outbreak, the authors said.

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