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Jonas R.R. Torfs @jonasrrtorfs.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Excited to share our latest publication on gut microbiome ageing in one of our closest living relatives, the bonobo! 🐵🦠 By studying 165 wild and zoo-housed bonobos, we show that bonobos experience the same key features of microbiome ageing as seen in humans ⌛ www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Graphical abstract of the new paper.

We studied 165 bonobos aged between 2 and 71 years old and collected 401 fecal samples to assess their gut microbiome, both in the wild and in zoos.

Some changes in the gut microbiome with age were conserved in the wild and in zoos, such as increased alpha diversity, a depletion of the core, and an increase in the abundance of rare genera. These are also patterns commonly seen in humans.

Other changes were context-dependent. In zoo-housed bonobos, instability and uniqueness of the gut microbiome increased with age, which follows patterns seen in industrialized humans. In contrast, this was not seen in wild bonobos nor in non-industrialized humans.

Cumulative lifetime exposures such as moving to different zoos increases microbiome uniqueness as well.

In conclusion, patterns of gut microbiome ageing are broadly conserved across hominids, but its expression is modulated by environmental context.

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Jonas R.R. Torfs @jonasrrtorfs.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

🐵💥 After 2000+ hours of observing aggression across 189 zoo-housed bonobos and chimpanzees in 22 groups, we found that the two species are equally aggressive, yet differ in the distribution of aggression across the sexes ♂️♀️ Our study is out now, read more below ⬇️

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Jonas R.R. Torfs @jonasrrtorfs.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

👀 Looking for a dissertation topic or research internship? 🐵 Always wanted to observe great apes? 🌟 This is your chance! Several positions are available to observe zoo-housed bonobos in the United States! ⬇️ See below for more information about the project 🐵🦠

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Jonas R.R. Torfs @jonasrrtorfs.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Happy to see one of the final chapters of my PhD out now! 🐵🦠 We identified key covariates of the bonobo gut microbiome, including ecology, diet, transit time, social interactions and maternal vertical transmission within a large cohort of wild and zoo-housed bonobos.

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Jonas R.R. Torfs @jonasrrtorfs.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Many thanks to all co-authors on this project for their contributions! Thanks to @fwovlaanderen.bsky.social for the main funding for this project, the Zoo Antwerp Centre for Research and Conservation and the @uantwerpen.be for the support, and all of the zoos for their participation in the project!

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Jonas R.R. Torfs @jonasrrtorfs.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

👩‍🍼 Bonobos were also more similar to their mother than to other closely related bonobos in terms of their microbiomes - even when not living in the same group anymore, indicating an important contribution of vertical transmission on shaping the bonobo gut bacteriome.

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Jonas R.R. Torfs @jonasrrtorfs.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

🫂Within the zoo-housed population, we found large effects of grooming on gut bacteriome similarity within group members - larger than the effects of spatial sharing in the enclosure, dyadic tenure, or kinship effects.

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Jonas R.R. Torfs @jonasrrtorfs.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

🍴 Diet, age, medication use, seasonality, gut transit time and early life adversity were important contributors to gut bacteriome variation.

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Jonas R.R. Torfs @jonasrrtorfs.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

🌴Sample collection was standardized over the entire cohort, allowing us to reliably detect a shift in composition and decrease in diversity in the zoo compared to the wild. Prevotella was the most prevalent gut bacteriome genus, found in all bonobos, but occurring in higher abundance in the wild.

Stack-plots of the 9 most abundant genera in the bonobo gut bacteriome, showing high prevalence and abundance of the genus Prevotella overall.

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Jonas R.R. Torfs @jonasrrtorfs.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

💩 We built 644 gut bacteriome profiles from fresh fecal samples of 212 bonobos, including two wild communities at the LuiKotale field site in the DRC and the entire European zoo-housed population (11 different zoos). Without their support, this study would not have been possible!

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Jonas R.R. Torfs @jonasrrtorfs.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Happy to share the publication of the keystone chapter of my PhD: "A comprehensive atlas of the bonobo gut bacteriome and its associated host and exposome factors" in @cp-cellreports.bsky.social 💩🦠🐵 📖 Read here: doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...

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