Tree nesting occurs in all extant great ape species, so it is likely to have evolved in a distant ancestor, and the last common ancestor of Pan and Homo may have slept in trees. As species of Pan are our closest living relatives, we can investigate factors that influence chimpanzee behaviour and make inferences about corresponding behaviour patterns of early hominins, including the transition from tree to ground sleeping. Similarly, chimpanzee ground nesting has important implications for all previous and subsequent great ape density estimations, as chimpanzees are often assumed to be exclusive arboreal night nesters and their ground nests may be incorrectly assigned to gorillas.ДЇrom the study of nesting behaviour one can infer important information about ecological adaptation and hominin evolution. Nest counts are used to estimate density and there is a widely recognized potential error of incorrectly assigning gorilla nests to chimpanzees, because gorillas sometimes nest in trees. There is an urgent need to improve population density estimates, as the lack of reliable estimates is detrimental to the management, monitoring and conservation of great apes. The Importance of the Study of Nesting Behaviour However, bonobos have been observed to ground-nest and chimpanzee ground night nests have increasingly been found to occur in many chimpanzee study sites from east to west, providing evidence of more flexible nesting patterns than previously assumed. for western lowland gorillas, Gorilla gorilla gorilla, from 7.36% of the time in Petit Loango, Gabon, to 96.2% in La Belgique, Dja Biosphere Reserve, Cameroon. Gorillas, on the other hand, appear to exhibit a more flexible nesting pattern, sleeping in nests built on the ground, e.g. The general consensus among primatologists has been that orang-utans, bonobos and chimpanzees build their night nests almost exclusively in trees. The basic features of nest building exist in all populations of orang-utans ( Pongo spp.), bonobos (Pan paniscus), gorillas ( Gorilla spp.) and chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) however, there is interspecies variation in terms of nesting site location. Ground nesting may be enabled due to high abundance of terrestrial herbaceous vegetation, and may be favoured for inconspicuousness and safety from gun hunters.ДЄll weaned great apes build structures to sleep in, by bending, breaking, and interweaving branches and manipulating foliage into a platform, which are commonly known as вЂnests'. We suggest chimpanzees visit swamps in the dry season (low water levels) for relief from hunting pressure and to consume Uapaca spp. We found no influence of leopard/elephant presence, but a possible influence of lack of nesting trees. Ground night nesting occurred at a rate of 3.47% (n = 1,008), with more in swamps, in the dry season and with increasing human activities. We conducted a 24-month marked nest count survey in La Belgique, Cameroon, and recorded the occurrence of chimpanzee tree and ground night nests, temperature and rainfall, predator and large mammal abundance, human activities, nesting tree species, and Uapaca spp. This has important implications for ape conservation management, given that accurate nest builder identification is required to estimate density, crucial in monitoring, and allows inferences about environmental and social factors that may have contributed to the transition from tree to ground sleeping in early hominins. Some chimpanzee populations exhibit ground night nesting, which occurs in different habitat types, is driven by a variety of interconnected factors, and may reflect cultural or social differences.

Chimpanzee scientific name