The gut microbiome is associated with GCs in capuchins and other platyrrhines, but I don’t know how this translates to bowel movements. Any sampling medium has its drawbacks, so we reduced any potential biases by including individual monkey ID as a random effect in our models.

Capuchins adapt to changes in the environment easily. For example, they access water in the dry season by eating the shoots of certain plants. In our study, the length of the drought likely made these plants and other secondary sources of water less abundant than other years.

These are some great questions! I addressed them individually below

GCs are linked to water balance/dehydration in humans and other animals. But this hasn't been closely looked at in capuchins. In wild animals it's difficult to disentangle the effects of low water availability from those of low food availability and high temperatures.