Data from: Stress responsiveness in a wild primate predicts survival across an extreme El Niño drought
Creators: name: Perry, Susan
name: Carrera, Sofia
name: Godoy, Irene
name: Gault, Colleen
name: Mensing, Ashley
name: Damm, Juliane
name: Beehner, Jacinta
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2025
Subjects: subject: Glucocorticoids
subject: Demography
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: El Niño-Southern Oscillation
subject: Cebus capucinus imitator
subject: HPA axis

description: We know more about the costs of chronic stress than the benefits of the acute stress response – an adaptive response that buffers organisms from life-threatening challenges. Yet, no primate study has empirically identified how the stress response adaptively impacts evolutionary fitness. Here, we take advantage of a natural experiment – an El Niño drought – that produced unprecedented mortality for wild white-faced capuchins. Using a reaction norm approach, we provide evidence from primates that a more robust stress response to a stressor, measured using fecal glucocorticoids, predicts a greater likelihood of survival. We show that individuals with greater stress responsiveness to previous droughts later had higher survival across a severe El Niño drought. Evolutionary models need empirical data on how stress responsivity varies in adaptive ways. While we cannot buffer subjects from catastrophic events, we can use them to understand which aspects of the stress response help animals to "weather the storm".
description: We used the following R packages: 

brms (versions 2.20.4 and 2.21.0)

sjPlot (version 2.8.14)

standaRdized (version 1.0)

tidyverse (version 2.0.0) 
Funding provided by: National Science FoundationROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62Award Number: 848360
Funding provided by: National Science FoundationROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62Award Number: 9633991
Funding provided by: National Science FoundationROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62Award Number: 9870429
Funding provided by: National Science FoundationROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62Award Number: 0613226
Funding provided by: National Science FoundationROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62Award Number: 1232371
Funding provided by: National Science FoundationROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62Award Number: 1638428
Funding provided by: National Science FoundationROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62Award Number: 1945701
Funding provided by: Leakey FoundationROR ID: https://ror.org/018kdpd27Award Number: 
Funding provided by: National Geographic SocietyROR ID: https://ror.org/04bqh5m06Award Number: 
Funding provided by: Wenner-Gren FoundationROR ID: https://ror.org/04qvvhf62Award Number: 80418
Funding provided by: Templeton World Charity FoundationROR ID: https://ror.org/00x0z1472Award Number: 0208
Funding provided by: University of Michigan–Ann ArborROR ID: https://ror.org/00jmfr291Award Number: 
Funding provided by: Wild Capuchin Foundation*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: 
Funding provided by: University of California, Los AngelesROR ID: https://ror.org/046rm7j60Award Number: 
Funding provided by: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary AnthropologyROR ID: https://ror.org/02a33b393Award Number: 
Funding provided by: National Science FoundationROR ID: https://ror.org/021nxhr62Award Number:
description: These are observational data: Demographic data and noninvasively obtained fecal samples were collected from a wild population of white-faced capuchin monkeys that are subjects of a long-term study at Lomas Barbudal Biological Reserve, Costa Rica. The rawest form of the demographic data and information about fecal samples are housed in a MySQL database at UCLA, which was queried to produce the data used in this study. Fecal samples were dried in the Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project field lab, and then extracted and assayed in a University of Michigan-Ann Arbor core facility lab.