The Iberian Lynx Conservation Breeding Program follows a multidisciplinary approach, integrated within the National Strategy for the Conservation of the Iberian lynx, which is carried out in cooperation with national, regional and international institutions. The main goals of the ex situ conservation programme are to: (1) maintain a genetically and demographically managed captive population; (2) create new Iberian lynx Lynx pardinus freeranging populations through re-introduction. To achieve the first goal, the Conservation Breeding Program aims to maintain 85% of the genetic diversity presently found in the wild for the next 30 years. This requires developing and maintaining 60-70 Iberian lynx as breeding stock. Growth projections indicate that the ex situ programme should achieve such a population target by the year 2010. Once this goal is reached, re-introduction efforts could begin. Thus, current ex situ efforts focus on producing psychologically and physically sound captive-born individuals. To achieve this goal, we use management and research techniques that rely on multidisciplinary input and knowledge generated on species' life history, behaviour, nutrition, veterinary and health aspects, genetics, reproductive physiology, endocrinology and ecology. Particularly important is adapting our husbandry schemes based on research data to promote natural behaviours in captivity (hunting, territoriality, social interactions) and a stress-free environment that is conducive to natural reproduction.

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Despite their ubiquity, in most cases little is known about the impact of eukaryotic parasites on their mammalian hosts. Comparative approaches provide a powerful method to investigate the impact of parasites on host ecology and evolution, though two issues are critical for such efforts: controlling for variation in methods of identifying parasites and incorporating heterogeneity in sampling effort across host species. To address these issues, there is a need for standardized methods to catalogue eukaryotic parasite diversity across broad phylogenetic host ranges. We demonstrate the feasibility of a metabarcoding approach for describing parasite communities by analysing faecal samples from 11 nonhuman primate species representing divergent lineages of the primate phylogeny and the full range of sampling effort (i.e. from no parasites reported in the literature to the best‐studied primates). We detected a number of parasite families and regardless of prior sampling effort, metabarcoding of only ten faecal samples identified parasite families previously undescribed in each host (x̅ = 8.5 new families per species). We found more overlap between parasite families detected with metabarcoding and published literature when more research effort—measured as the number of publications—had been conducted on the host species' parasites. More closely related primates and those from the same continent had more similar parasite communities, highlighting the biological relevance of sampling even a small number of hosts. Collectively, results demonstrate that metabarcoding methods are sensitive and powerful enough to standardize studies of eukaryotic parasite communities across host species, providing essential new tools for macroecological studies of parasitism.

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Amylase expression was increased in hamadryas baboons (P = 0.0376) compared to humans and might indicate dietary starch use in Cercopithecines.