Universität Konstanz

Research reveals strong social relationships make hyenas more likely to team up against lions, even when there's no obvious benefit. After more than 35 years of surveillance, Michigan State University researchers are exposing some of the secret workings of mobs. To be clear, these mobs are made up of spotted hyenas. Publishing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the MSU team revealed that relationships and social interactions between hyenas can influence when two or more animals decide to work together to attack lions. This type of cooperative behavior is called mobbing. "Social relationships can overcome barriers to mobbing and let hyenas achieve cooperation," said Tracy Montgomery, a lead author of the new report. Montgomery started the project while earning her doctorate in the lab of Kay Holekamp at MSU and was supported by the Dr. Marvin Hensley Endowed Scholarship Fund in Zoology. "If hyenas greet each other, they're more likely to mob," said Montgomery, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the University of Konstanz in Germany. "If they have strong social bonds, they're more likely to mob." Spotted hyenas are social creatures with complex social structures that are similar to baboons and other primates. Researchers study animals like these to explore how cooperative behaviors -- like teaming up against a common foe -- have evolved not just in wildlife, but in humans as well. "It's fascinating because this seems like something humans would do," said Kenna Lehmann, another lead author who also worked on the project while earning her doctorate as part of Holekamp's team. She's now an assistant professor at MSU. "The relationships they build over time make a difference," Lehmann said. "It's not just, 'I'll give you a zebra leg if you help.'" "One of the coolest things about this paper is the finding that hyenas are sensitive to social relationships across a range of temporal scales," added Holekamp, a University Distinguished Professor of integrative biology in MSU's College of Natural Science. "They base their decisions about whether or not to cooperate in mobbing lions on both immediate-term friendly behaviors and long-term, friendship-like relationships." 'So weird and fascinating' Holekamp has been studying hyenas in Kenya for 35 years, but that wasn't her original plan. "I went to Kenya in 1988 thinking I'd do a dissertation-length project -- three or four years -- with hyenas, then I'd move on to study dolphins or monkeys or some other animals," said Holekamp, who is also a core faculty member in MSU's Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, or EEB, program. "But the hyenas proved to be so weird and fascinating that they have kept my rapt attention." Take, as a weird and fascinating example, the fact that female spotted hyenas have what are known as pseudo-penises. Understanding why female genitalia is so similar to male genitalia is one of the big, looming biological questions about hyenas, Holekamp said. Although that question doesn't factor directly into this study, it does underscore why Holekamp finds hyenas so interesting. "Spotted hyenas appear to violate many of the basic rules of mammalian biology," Holekamp said. "By studying them, we can potentially determine what the rules really are." As doctoral students working with Holekamp, both Montgomery and Lehmann became interested in what hyenas' rules of engagement were when it comes to mobbing lions. "We wanted to understand why they would risk themselves in this way -- because it is risky -- and what they got out of it," Montgomery said. When researchers are able to determine what caused the death of a hyena, it's a lion more than 25% of the time. Lions and hyenas have overlapping territories, though. So, Lehmann and Montgomery first examined mobbing through the lens of its obvious benefits, such as fighting off lions for food. In a 2017 report published in Current Zoology, the team showed that, although mobbing occurred most frequently near freshly killed food, hyenas also formed mobs when there was no obvious benefit. "There were times we'd be watching them thinking, 'Why are you doing that? That is such a bad idea,'" Lehmann said. 30 years in the making In their new study, the researchers dug deeper into mobbing behavior to look at other motivations. In doing so, they also discovered that mobbing was more frequent when the risk of injury or death to hyenas was lower, even in the absence of a benefit. For example, male lions are larger than females and more dangerous to hyenas. Hyenas were more likely to mob when there weren't any male lions around. Conversely, in spotted hyenas, females are larger than males and females were more likely to join mobs. But it was the social components of mobbing that stood out most to researchers, and it's a discovery made possible by observing several generations of hyenas in the same habitat over 35 years. During that time, the team always had several collaborators present at its research camp in the Maasai Mara National Reserve. "There's no way we would have been able to do this study without it being part of a 35-year project," Lehmann said. One of the big reasons is that researchers don't see mobs every day -- far from it. The team observed about 1,000 mobbing interactions between hyenas and lions over the past three decades. Rarer still are the interactions where researchers could record all the information they needed. "These interactions are extremely fast paced, there are often many hyenas and lions present and most are moving around fairly quickly," Holekamp said. "This makes accurately recording what happens in adequate detail to include in our analyses very challenging." Of those roughly 1,000 interactions, 325 had robust enough data for Montgomery and Lehmann to analyze and make their discoveries. The two credited the hard work of students, research assistants and other collaborators over the past 30 years, who helped standardize and organize observations from the field into usable data sets. And Holekamp's team is still working to find what other secrets those data sets hold. "Finding these results was really exciting, but I feel like the fun part of science is you answer a question and you immediately have 50 more," Montgomery said. "There are so many more things that we need to do with this data." This project was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and by the Human Frontier Science Program. You can learn more about the Mara Hyena project on the team's blog and help support their next 30 years of research by donating.

ZUG, Switzerland, Nov. 15, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pharvaris (Nasdaq: PHVS), a clinical-stage company developing novel, oral bradykinin B2 receptor antagonists to treat and prevent hereditary angioedema (HAE) attacks, today announced the appointment of Stefan Abele, Ph.D., as Chief Technical Operations Officer. In this role, he will be responsible for all chemistry, manufacturing, and controls (CMC) activities, supply chain, and program management as Pharvaris progresses into late-stage clinical development. Dr. Abele joins Pharvaris with more than 20 years of experience in process development, end-to-end Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) supply chain, cross-functional CMC activities, GMP manufacturing, global vendor management, and people leadership. “Stefan joins Pharvaris at a transformative time as we prepare to transition into a late-stage clinical company and prepare for commercialization in the coming years,” said Berndt Modig, Chief Executive Officer of Pharvaris. “His experience building sustainable and scalable production strategies for clinical-stage candidates and commercial-grade medicines as well as setting up agile expert teams will be instrumental in the execution of our Phase 3 studies and diligent preparations for commercialization. We welcome Stefan and the insights he will bring to our executive team.” Dr. Abele added, “Deucrictibant could significantly improve the current standard of care for those living with HAE and Pharvaris is poised to make a meaningful impact on the entire HAE community. To our knowledge, deucrictibant is the only orally bioavailable B2 receptor antagonist in development for the treatment of HAE; I am excited to have the opportunity to join the Pharvaris team and contribute my expertise in the development of this novel therapeutic.” Previously, Dr. Abele served as the Senior Vice President, Chemical Development and Commercial Manufacturing at Idorsia Pharmaceuticals, where he and his team were responsible for the API development and manufacturing of QUVIVIQ (daridorexant), PIVLAZ (clazosentan), and aprocitentan. Prior to Idorsia, Dr. Abele worked at Actelion Pharmaceuticals where he established and grew the fully integrated Chemistry Process R&D department. Earlier, he held positions of growing responsibility at Carbogen-Amcis, including as Head of Production and as a manager of teams in R&D and GMP manufacturing of APIs for global pharma companies. Dr. Abele holds a Diploma in Chemistry from the University of Konstanz and a Ph.D. in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from the ETH Zurich. About PharvarisBuilding on its deep-seated roots in HAE, Pharvaris is a clinical-stage company developing novel, oral bradykinin B2 receptor antagonists to treat and prevent HAE attacks. By directly pursuing this clinically proven therapeutic target with novel small molecules, the Pharvaris team aspires to offer people with all sub-types of HAE efficacious, safe, and easy-to-administer alternatives to treat attacks, both on-demand and prophylactically. The company brings together the best talent in the industry with deep expertise in rare diseases and HAE. For more information, visit https://pharvaris.com/. 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Plant species from certain geographic regions are more successful in spreading outside their native ranges than others -- but why? Ecologists provide answers by exploring how the ecological and evolutionary histories of plants can influence their relationships with humans and their success as invaders. Plant species from certain geographic regions are more successful in spreading outside their native ranges than others -- but why? An international research team led by Konstanz ecologists provides answers by exploring how the ecological and evolutionary histories of plants can influence their relationships with humans and their success as invaders. Human activities -- for example, global trade and travel -- are driving the spread of plants beyond their natural ranges and around the globe. However, not all species benefit equally from these movements; only some are able to successfully establish populations (i.e. naturalize) in new locations. Data on the global distribution of alien plants reveals that plants originating from certain geographic regions are more successful at naturalizing than others. The evolutionary imbalance hypothesis (EIH) offers possible explanations for this phenomenon, but has not yet been verified on a global scale. An international research team led by biologist Mark van Kleunen from the University of Konstanz has now succeeded in confirming key predictions of this hypothesis using extensive global data. In their study in Nature Ecology & Evolution, the researchers also discover intriguing similarities in the origins of plants that successfully establish populations outside their natural ranges and those that humans have selected for cultivation and economic use -- suggesting that biogeographic factors influence biological and cultural systems in similar ways. Dating back to Darwin At its essence, the ideas of the EIH date back to Charles Darwin. "Darwin proposed that geographic barriers divide the Earth's ecosystems into various evolutionary arenas," says Trevor Fristoe, first author of the study and ecologist at the Department of Biology at the University of Konstanz. Within each of these arenas, the organisms inhabiting them would be exposed to unique geographic and ecological conditions that influence the intensity of natural selection. "The result is differences in the absolute fitness for species originating from different regions -- evolutionary imbalances -, and these differences have consequences for which species are more likely to successfully establish in new areas when barriers are removed," Fristoe continues. Based on these ideas, the EIH makes predictions about the characteristics of global regions that drive the evolution of particularly successful aliens. For example, larger regions should support larger populations and higher genetic diversity to allow for more efficient natural selection. Species-rich regions should serve as intense proving grounds where species must evolve to persist in the presence of a wide variety of competitors and enemies. The current study tested these predictions on a global scale. For this, the researchers used an unprecedented data set that included the native and alien distributions of over 99 percent of all known seed plants -- over 330,000 species. Consistent with the EIH, they demonstrated that plants originating from vast, species-rich regions are among the most successful alien plants. "Thus, our study confirms two key predictions of the EIH on a global scale," emphasizes Mark van Kleunen, head of the international research team. Economic plants show a similar pattern What is more, the data revealed a previously unrecognized link between evolutionary imbalance and the economic use of plants by humans: the native range characteristics that select for successful invaders are also associated with the species that we grow for economic use. "All else equal, humans should chose to cultivate plants with a higher capacity for survival, growth, and proliferation. This has resulted in feedbacks where species with high potential as invaders are also more likely to be intentionally moved around the globe. Our study demonstrates these intriguing links and suggests how evolutionary imbalances in biological and cultural systems may even interact," says van Kleunen. The study takes into account distribution data from over 330,000 plants -- almost all (99.5%) known seed plants.