- Chimpanzees are adapted to live across diverse habitats in Africa, but little is known about the potential adaptation of chimps in different environments.
- A new study has found that these apes possess genetic traits that help them adapt to different habitat conditions, some of which may be protecting them against malaria.
- The scientists say that, as human activities and climate change continue to threaten chimpanzees’ existence, understanding their genetics and natural history enhances knowledge of how to ensure their long-term survival and conservation.
- Given their vital ecological roles, evolutionary significance, and precarious status, chimpanzee conservation is an urgent global priority.
NAIROBI ― Understanding the genetic traits of chimpanzees and how they help them adapt to unique conditions in different habitats is critical to maintaining their resilience and ensuring long-term survival, according to a study. Some of the genetic traits may even protect the chimps against diseases like malaria.
Habitats of chimpanzee subspecies vary from rainforests to savannahs. To guarantee that individual chimps are adapted to their local environment and to maintain their capacity to continue adaptation, the researchers of the study say, conservation efforts must take into account local genetic adaptation.
“This is particularly relevant, as direct human-induced destruction, climate change, and disease transmission are rapidly changing the environments experienced by chimpanzees,” according to the study.
While chimpanzees are known to inhabit diverse habitats, from forest landscapes to woodland-savannah distributed across East and West Africa, it remains unknown if their genetic adaptation facilitates such habitat diversity.
According to the IUCN red list, all four chimpanzee subspecies are endangered due to habitat destruction, poaching, and infectious diseases, with the western chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes verus) listed as critically endangered, facing the greatest threat of all.
A team of more than 80 researchers from Africa, Europe and North America studied the DNA of 828 wild chimpanzees and found that they had largely adapted to their habitats. The researchers sequenced 828 fecal samples collected across 52 sample sites from 18 countries — Central African Republic, Cameroon, Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda.
Among the great apes, chimpanzees are the closest relatives to human beings, with whom they share over 98% of their distinctive characteristics. And in this study, the researchers discovered genetic changes that help the chimps survive the same way humans have evolved to adapt to malaria.
The study’s lead author Harrison Ostridge, a Ph.D. candidate from University College London (UCL), tells Mongabay that the evidence of adaptation to malaria in chimpanzees linked to the same genes associated with malaria resistance in humans suggests that there may be limited ways through which resistance to the malaria parasite can evolve.
The scientists compared the genetic information from the 388 chimpanzees involved in the final analysis to existing data about their local habitats, identifying the most frequent genetic variants in certain regions against others. They found the strongest evidence of genetic adaptation in GYPA (glycophorin A), a gene responsible for resistance to malaria in humans, and in HBB (hemoglobin), a gene responsible for sickle cell anemia in humans.
“Even if chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, a keystone species and endangered, we know very little about their potential adaptations to the environment. This is because being elusive and protected, wild individuals cannot be directly sampled for DNA,” Aida Andrés, a co-author of the study and a genomics professor from UCL, tells Mongabay.
She says that their previous work had suggested that genetic adaptations have contributed to differences among the chimpanzee subspecies. However, they knew nothing about potential adaptations within a subspecies, which would contribute to adaptive genetic differences among populations within each subspecies.
Andrés also says that researchers knew little about the potential adaptation of natural chimpanzee populations to the different types of environments that they inhabit. “The new ability to extract and sequence chimpanzee DNA at the genome-scale from non-invasive samples — in this case, feces — made it possible to address this question, which we found both interesting and important,” she said.
According to Estelle Raballand, founder of the Chimpanzee Conservation Center (CCC) in Guinea, the conservation of chimpanzees, particularly the critically endangered Western chimpanzees, is essential for several interconnected ecological, cultural and ethical reasons.
“Their cognitive abilities and emotional capacity necessitate ethical stewardship. Allowing them to go extinct would raise serious moral questions about humanity’s role and responsibility in preserving the diversity of life,” according to Raballand.
She says that reforestation, habitat protection and anti-poaching measures, as well as the application of laws against selling, owning, transporting and killing chimpanzees, including sanctuaries for confiscated orphaned chimpanzees, are important conservation measures.
“The conservation of chimpanzees is an urgent global priority due to their critical ecological roles, evolutionary significance, and precarious status. Protecting them ensures the preservation of biodiversity, supports ecological balance, and fulfills ethical obligations to conserve life on Earth. Immediate action is necessary to raise enough funds for habitat protection, anti-poaching measures, sensitization and awareness campaigns and community involvement to prevent their extinction,” Raballand says.
Studying the chimpanzees’ genetic adaptation to pathogens enhances knowledge on the biological response of host species to infectious agents, says Andrés. “For this reason, conserving as many populations as possible allows us to discover more potential mechanisms of adaptation to infectious disease.”
Additionally, considering chimpanzees have adapted to their savannah habitats, which have higher temperatures, lower rainfall and less food availability, the researchers said further study on this may provide a snapshot on how human ancestors adapted to such habitats during their migration from the African forest to the savannah millions of years ago.
Banner image: Chimpanzee at Kibale Forest. Image by Xin Li via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).
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Citation:
Ostridge, H. J., Fontsere, C., Lizano, E., Soto, D. C., … Andrés, A. M. (2025). Local genetic adaptation to habitat in wild chimpanzees. Science, 387(6730). doi:10.1126/science.adn7954
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