Dr. Rosenbaum will use a long-term data set to investigate wild mountain gorillas, which do not appear to suffer fitness costs when they lose their mothers at a young age. Using these data she will determine what constitutes early adversity in one of humans’ closest living relatives; to establish whether their resiliency to maternal loss is generalizable to other sources of adversity; and to determine whether they suffer health consequences of early adversity. Answering these questions will establish groundwork for exploring the bio-social pathways through which early environments influence health and survival.

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