It is time to acknowledge and overcome conservation's deep-seated systemic racism, which has historically marginalized Black, Indigenous and people of colour (BIPOC) communities and continues to do so. We describe how the mutually reinforcing ‘twin spheres’ of conservation science and conservation practice perpetuate this systemic racism. We trace how institutional structures in conservation science (e.g. degree programmes, support and advancement opportunities, course syllabuses) can systematically produce conservation graduates with partial and problematic conceptions of conservation's history and contemporary purposes. Many of these graduates go on to work in conservation practice, reproducing conservation's colonial history by contributing to programmes based on outmoded conservation models that disproportionately harm rural BIPOC communities and further restrict access and inclusion for BIPOC conservationists. We provide practical, actionable proposals for breaking vicious cycles of racism in the system of conservation we have with virtuous cycles of inclusion, equality, equity and participation in the system of conservation we want.

In group‐living species, individuals often have preferred affiliative social partners, with whom ties or bonds can confer advantages that correspond with greater fitness. For example, in adult female baboons and juvenile horses, individuals with stronger or more social ties experience greater survival. We used detailed behavioral and life history records to explore the relationship between tie quality and survival in a gregarious monkey (Cercopithecus mitis stuhlmanni), while controlling for dominance rank, group size, and life history strategy. We used Cox proportional hazards regressions to model the cumulative (multi‐year) and current (single‐year) relationships of social ties and the hazard of mortality in 83 wild adult females of known age, observed 2–8 years each (437 subject‐years) in eight social groups. The strength of bonds with close partners was associated with increased mortality risk under certain conditions: Females that had strong bonds with close partners that were inconsistent over multiple years had a higher risk of mortality than females adopting any other social strategy. Within a given year, females had a higher risk of death if they were strongly bonded with partners that changed from the previous year versus with partners that remained consistent. Dominance rank, number of adult female groupmates, and age at first reproduction did not predict the risk of death. This study demonstrates that costs and benefits of strong social bonds can be context‐dependent, relating to the consistency of social partners over time.

Many studies highlight the correlation between social ties and fitness, yet often cannot reveal how ties influence fitness. This review is aimed to facilitate the formulation and testing of hypotheses in this area on non-human primates. I outline fitness-relevant measures of social ties and 6 potential pathways from ties to fitness. Pathways include communal care; group level cooperation for resources; monopolizing resources within groups; attaining social status; reducing risk and allostatic load; and developing behavioural competence. Hypotheses for further evaluation include (1) fitness increases sociality, not vice versa; (2) early life experience influences both ties and fitness, (3) ties are actually costly; (4) short term costs of ties are outweighed by long term benefits. With the advance of theoretical and methodological approaches to evaluate the costs and benefits of social ties, and monitor them at multi-generational field sites, primate behavioural ecologists are poised to test several of these hypotheses.

While declining physical performance is an expected consequence of ageing, human clinical research has placed increasing emphasis on physical frailty as a predictor of death and disability in the elderly. We examined non-invasive measures approximating frailty in a richly sampled longitudinal dataset on wild chimpanzees. Using urinary creatinine to assess lean body mass, we found moderate but significant declines in physical condition with age in both sexes. While older chimpanzees spent less of their day in the trees and feeding, they did not alter activity budgets with respect to travel or resting. There was little evidence that declining lean body mass had negative consequences independent of age. Old chimpanzees with poor lean body mass rested more often but did not otherwise differ in activity. Males, but not females, in poor condition were more likely to exhibit respiratory illness. Poor muscle mass was associated acutely with death in males, but it did not predict future mortality in either sex. While there may be some reasons to suspect biological differences in the susceptibility to frailty in chimpanzees versus humans, our data are consistent with recent reports from humans that lean, physically active individuals can successfully combat frailty. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution of the primate ageing process’.

Oxidative stress (OS) plays a marked role in aging and results from a variety of stressors, making it a powerful measure of health and a way to examine costs associated with life history investments within and across species. However, few urinary OS markers have been examined under field conditions, particularly in primates, and their utility to non-invasively monitor the costs of acute stressors versus the long-term damage associated with aging is poorly understood. In this study, we examined variation in 5 urinary markers of oxidative damage and protection under 5 validation paradigms for 37 wild, chimpanzees living in the Kibale National Park, Uganda. We used 924 urine samples to examine responses to acute immune challenge (respiratory illness or severe wounding), as well as mixed-longitudinal and intra-individual variation with age. DNA damage (8-OHdG) correlated positively with all other markers of damage (F-isoprostanes, MDA-TBARS, and neopterin) but did not correlate with protection (total antioxidant capacity). Within individuals, all markers of damage responded to at least one if not both types of acute infection. While OS is expected to increase with age, this was not generally true in chimpanzees. However, significant changes in oxidative damage were detected within past-prime individuals and those close to death. Our results indicate that OS can be measured using field-collected urine and integrates short- and long-term aspects of health. They further suggest that more data are needed from long-lived, wild animals to illuminate if common age-related increases in inflammation and OS damage are typical or recently aberrant in humans.