Genotyping aids field study of unhabituated wild chimpanzees.

Prolonged habituation times for wild great apes delay the collection of behavioral and environmental data, sometimes for years. However, genotyping of noninvasively collected feces can provide useful socioecological information in the meantime. We tested this premise on an unhabituated wild population of western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Mont Assirik, Senegal. Genotyping yielded information on kinship, group size, party size and composition, sex ratio, and ranging.