1
|
Ekanayake‐Weber M, Mathew N, Cunha D, Payen N, Grimm V, Koenig A. It's about time: Feeding competition costs of sociality are affected more by temporal characteristics than spatial distribution. Ecol Evol 2024; 14:e11209. [PMID: 38628923 PMCID: PMC11019304 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.11209] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/15/2024] [Revised: 03/14/2024] [Accepted: 03/18/2024] [Indexed: 04/19/2024] Open
Abstract
For most herbivorous animals, group-living appears to incur a high cost by intensifying feeding competition. These costs raise the question of how gregariousness (i.e., the tendency to aggregate) could have evolved to such an extent in taxa such as anthropoid primates and ungulates. When attempting to test the potential benefits and costs, previous foraging models demonstrated that group-living might be beneficial by lowering variance in intake, but that it reduces overall foraging success. However, these models did not fully account for the fact that gregariousness has multiple experiences and can vary in relation to ecological variables and foraging competition. Here, we present an agent-based model for testing how ecological variables impact the costs and benefits of gregariousness. In our simulations, primate-like agents forage on a variable resource landscape while maintaining spatial cohesion with conspecifics to varying degrees. The agents' energy intake rate, daily distance traveled, and variance in energy intake were recorded. Using Morris Elementary Effects sensitivity analysis, we tested the sensitivity of 10 model parameters, of which 2 controlled gregarious behavior and 8 controlled food resources, including multiple aspects of temporal and spatial heterogeneity. We found that, while gregariousness generally increased feeding competition, the costs of gregariousness were much lower when resources were less variable over time (i.e., when calorie extraction was slow and resource renewal was frequent). We also found that maintaining proximity to other agents resulted in lower variance in energy intake when resources were more variable over time. Thus, it appears that the costs and benefits of gregariousness are strongly influenced by the temporal characteristics of food resources, giving insight into the pressures that shaped the evolution of sociality and group living, including in our own lineage.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Marcy Ekanayake‐Weber
- Department of AnthropologyStony Brook UniversityStony BrookNew YorkUSA
- Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropological SciencesStony Brook UniversityStony BrookNew YorkUSA
| | - Namita Mathew
- Department of Computer ScienceStony Brook UniversityStony BrookNew YorkUSA
| | - Deanna Cunha
- Department of AnthropologyStony Brook UniversityStony BrookNew YorkUSA
| | - Nathanael Payen
- Department of Computer ScienceStony Brook UniversityStony BrookNew YorkUSA
| | - Volker Grimm
- Department of Ecological ModelingHelmholtz Centre for Environmental Research – UFZLeipzigGermany
| | - Andreas Koenig
- Department of AnthropologyStony Brook UniversityStony BrookNew YorkUSA
- Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropological SciencesStony Brook UniversityStony BrookNew YorkUSA
- Graduate Program in Ecology and EvolutionStony Brook UniversityStony BrookNew YorkUSA
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Fei H, de Guinea M, Yang L, Garber PA, Zhang L, Chapman CA, Fan P. Wild gibbons plan their travel pattern according to food types of breakfast. Proc Biol Sci 2023; 290:20230430. [PMID: 37192666 PMCID: PMC10188241 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2023.0430] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/22/2023] [Accepted: 04/25/2023] [Indexed: 05/18/2023] Open
Abstract
Planning for the future is a complex skill that is often considered uniquely human. This cognitive ability has never been investigated in wild gibbons (Hylobatidae). Here we evaluated the movement patterns from sleeping trees to out-of-sight breakfast trees in two groups of endangered skywalker gibbons (Hoolock tianxing). These Asian apes inhabit a cold seasonal montane forest in southwestern China. After controlling for possible confounding variables including group size, sleeping pattern (sleep alone or huddle together), rainfall and temperature, we found that food type (fruits or leaves) of the breakfast tree was the most important factor affecting gibbon movement patterns. Fruit breakfast trees were more distant from sleeping trees compared with leaf trees. Gibbons left sleeping trees and arrived at breakfast trees earlier when they fed on fruits compared with leaves. They travelled fast when breakfast trees were located further away from the sleeping trees. Our study suggests that gibbons had foraging goals in mind and plan their departure times accordingly. This ability may reflect a capacity for route-planning, which would enable them to effectively exploit highly dispersed fruit resources in high-altitude montane forests.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Hanlan Fei
- School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China
- College of Life Science, China West Normal University, Nanchong 637002, People's Republic of China
| | - Miguel de Guinea
- Movement Ecology Lab, Department of Ecology Evolution and Behavior, Alexander Silverman Institute of Life Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
| | - Li Yang
- School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China
| | - Paul A. Garber
- Department of Anthropology, Program in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
- International Centre of Biodiversity and Primate Conservation, Dali University, Dali 671000, People's Republic of China
| | - Lu Zhang
- School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China
| | - Colin A. Chapman
- Biology Department, Vancouver Island University, Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada V9R 5S5
- Wilson Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004, USA
- School of Life Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg 3209, South Africa
- Shaanxi Key Laboratory for Animal Conservation, Northwest University, Xi'an 710127, People's Republic of China
| | - Pengfei Fan
- School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, People's Republic of China
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
Allritz M, Call J, Schweller K, McEwen ES, de Guinea M, Janmaat KRL, Menzel CR, Dolins FL. Chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes) navigate to find hidden fruit in a virtual environment. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2022; 8:eabm4754. [PMID: 35749496 PMCID: PMC9232100 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abm4754] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/20/2021] [Accepted: 05/09/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
Almost all animals navigate their environment to find food, shelter, and mates. Spatial cognition of nonhuman primates in large-scale environments is notoriously difficult to study. Field research is ecologically valid, but controlling confounding variables can be difficult. Captive research enables experimental control, but space restrictions can limit generalizability. Virtual reality technology combines the best of both worlds by creating large-scale, controllable environments. We presented six chimpanzees with a seminaturalistic virtual environment, using a custom touch screen application. The chimpanzees exhibited signature behaviors reminiscent of real-life navigation: They learned to approach a landmark associated with the presence of fruit, improving efficiency over time; they located this landmark from novel starting locations and approached a different landmark when necessary. We conclude that virtual environments can allow for standardized testing with higher ecological validity than traditional tests in captivity and harbor great potential to contribute to longstanding questions in primate navigation, e.g., the use of landmarks, Euclidean maps, or spatial frames of reference.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Matthias Allritz
- Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig 04103, Germany
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9JP, UK
| | - Josep Call
- Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig 04103, Germany
| | - Ken Schweller
- Ape Cognition and Conservation Initiative, Des Moines, IA, USA
| | - Emma S. McEwen
- Department of Comparative Cultural Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig 04103, Germany
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9JP, UK
| | - Miguel de Guinea
- Movement Ecology Lab, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat Ram, Jerusalem 9190401, Israel
| | - Karline R. L. Janmaat
- Evolutionary and Population Biology, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Department of Cognitive Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands
- ARTIS Amsterdam Royal Zoo, Amsterdam, Netherlands
| | - Charles R. Menzel
- Language Research Center, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA
| | - Francine L. Dolins
- Department of Behavioral Sciences, College of Arts, Sciences, and Letters, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Dearborn, MI, USA
| |
Collapse
|
4
|
Strepsirrhine movement and navigation: sense and sociality. Curr Opin Behav Sci 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2022.101133] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/18/2022]
|
5
|
De Petrillo F, Bettle R, Rosati AG. Insights from matched species comparisons for understanding cognition in the wild. Curr Opin Behav Sci 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.cobeha.2022.101134] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/03/2022]
|
6
|
García MG, de Guinea M, Bshary R, van de Waal E. Drivers and outcomes of between-group conflict in vervet monkeys. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2022; 377:20210145. [PMID: 35369750 PMCID: PMC8977665 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2021.0145] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/17/2022] Open
Abstract
Neighbouring groups compete over access to resources and territories in between-group encounters, which can escalate into between-group conflicts (BGCs). Both the ecological characteristics of a territory and the rival's fighting ability shape the occurrence and outcome of such contests. What remains poorly understood, however, is how seasonal variability in the ecological value of a territory together with fighting ability related to the likelihood of between-group encounters and the extent to which these escalate into conflicts. To test this, we observed and followed four vervet monkey groups in the wild, and recorded the group structure (i.e. size, composition), the locations and the outcomes of 515 BGCs. We then assessed key ecological measures at these locations, such as vegetation availability (estimated from Copernicus Sentinel 2 satellite images) and the intensity of usage of these locations. We tested to what extent these factors together influenced the occurrence and outcomes of BGCs. We found that the occurrence of BGCs increased at locations with higher vegetation availability relative to the annual vegetation availability within the group's home territory. Also, groups engaging in a BGC at locations far away from their home territory were less likely to win a BGC. Regarding group structure, we found that smaller groups systematically won BGCs against larger groups, which can be explained by potentially higher rates of individual free-riding occurring in larger groups. This study sheds light on how the ecology of encounter locations in combination with a group's social characteristics can critically impact the dynamics of BGCs in a non-human primate species. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Intergroup conflict across taxa’.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Miguel Gareta García
- Inkawu Vervet Project, Mawana Game Reserve, KwaZulu Natal 3115, South Africa.,Department of Eco-Ethology, Faculty of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, Rue Emile Argand 11, Neuchâtel 2000, Switzerland
| | - Miguel de Guinea
- Movement Ecology Laboratory, Alexander Silverman Institute of Life Sciences, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
| | - Redouan Bshary
- Inkawu Vervet Project, Mawana Game Reserve, KwaZulu Natal 3115, South Africa.,Department of Eco-Ethology, Faculty of Biology, University of Neuchâtel, Rue Emile Argand 11, Neuchâtel 2000, Switzerland
| | - Erica van de Waal
- Inkawu Vervet Project, Mawana Game Reserve, KwaZulu Natal 3115, South Africa.,Department of Ecology and Evolution, Faculty of Biology and Medicine, University of Lausanne, Lausanne 1015, Switzerland
| |
Collapse
|
7
|
Watkins B, de Guinea M, Poindexter SA, Ganzhorn JU, Donati G, Eppley TM. Routes matter: the effect of seasonality on bamboo lemur navigational strategies. Anim Behav 2022. [DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.01.019] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/30/2022]
|
8
|
Fei H, de Guinea M, Yang L, Chapman CA, Fan P. Where to sleep next? Evidence for spatial memory associated with sleeping sites in Skywalker gibbons (Hoolock tianxing). Anim Cogn 2022; 25:891-903. [PMID: 35099623 DOI: 10.1007/s10071-022-01600-0] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/23/2021] [Revised: 01/11/2022] [Accepted: 01/13/2022] [Indexed: 12/29/2022]
Abstract
Finding suitable sleeping sites is highly advantageous but challenging for wild animals. While suitable sleeping sites provide protection against predators and enhance sleep quality, these sites are heterogeneously distributed in space. Thus, animals may generate memories associated with suitable sleeping sites to be able to approach them efficiently when needed. Here, we examined traveling trajectories (i.e., direction, linearity, and speed of traveling) in relation to sleeping sites to assess whether Skywalker gibbons (Hoolock tianxing) use spatial memory to locate sleeping trees. Our results show that about 30% of the sleeping trees were efficiently revisited by gibbons and the recursive use of trees was higher than a randomly simulated visiting pattern. When gibbons left the last feeding tree for the day, they traveled in a linear fashion to sleeping sites out-of-sight (> 40 m away), and linearity of travel to sleeping trees out-of-sight was higher than 0.800 for all individuals. The speed of the traveling trajectories to sleeping sites out-of-sight increased not only as sunset approached, but also when daily rainfall increased. These results suggest that gibbons likely optimized their trajectories to reach sleeping sites under increasing conditions of predatory risk (i.e., nocturnal predators) and uncomfortable weather. Our study provides novel evidence on the use of spatial memory to locate sleeping sites through analyses of movement patterns, which adds to an already extensive body of literature linking cognitive processes and sleeping patterns in human and non-human animals.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Hanlan Fei
- Department of Ecology, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China.,College of Life Science, China West Normal University, Nanchong, 637002, China
| | - Miguel de Guinea
- Movement Ecology Laboratory, Department of Ecology Evolution and Behavior, Alexander Silverman Institute of Life Science, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 91904, Jerusalem, Israel
| | - Li Yang
- Department of Ecology, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China
| | - Colin A Chapman
- Wilson Center, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC, 20004, USA.,Department of Anthropology, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, 20037, USA.,School of Life Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg, 3209, South Africa.,Shaanxi Key Laboratory for Animal Conservation, Northwest University, Xi'an, 710127, China
| | - Pengfei Fan
- Department of Ecology, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China.
| |
Collapse
|
9
|
Valentini G, Pavlic TP, Walker SI, Pratt SC, Biro D, Sasaki T. Naïve individuals promote collective exploration in homing pigeons. eLife 2021; 10:e68653. [PMID: 34928230 PMCID: PMC8687659 DOI: 10.7554/elife.68653] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/22/2021] [Accepted: 10/26/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Group-living animals that rely on stable foraging or migratory routes can develop behavioural traditions to pass route information down to inexperienced individuals. Striking a balance between exploitation of social information and exploration for better alternatives is essential to prevent the spread of maladaptive traditions. We investigated this balance during cumulative route development in the homing pigeon Columba livia. We quantified information transfer within pairs of birds in a transmission-chain experiment and determined how birds with different levels of experience contributed to the exploration-exploitation trade-off. Newly introduced naïve individuals were initially more likely to initiate exploration than experienced birds, but the pair soon settled into a pattern of alternating leadership with both birds contributing equally. Experimental pairs showed an oscillating pattern of exploration over generations that might facilitate the discovery of more efficient routes. Our results introduce a new perspective on the roles of leadership and information pooling in the context of collective learning.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Gabriele Valentini
- Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Tempe, United States
- Arizona State University, School of Life Sciences, Tempe, United States
| | - Theodore P Pavlic
- Arizona State University, School of Life Sciences, Tempe, United States
- Arizona State University, Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Tempe, United States
- Arizona State University, School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, Tempe, United States
- Arizona State University, School of Sustainability, Athens, United States
- Arizona State University, School of Complex Adaptive Systems, Tempe, United States
- Arizona State University, ASU-SFI Center for Biosocial Complex Systems, Tempe, United States
| | - Sara Imari Walker
- Arizona State University, School of Earth and Space Exploration, Tempe, United States
- Arizona State University, School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, Tempe, United States
- Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, United States
| | - Stephen C Pratt
- Arizona State University, Beyond Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science, Tempe, United States
| | - Dora Biro
- University of Oxford, Department of Zoology, Oxford, United States
- University of Rochester, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Rochester, United States
| | - Takao Sasaki
- University of Georgia, Odum School of Ecology, Athens, United States
| |
Collapse
|
10
|
Jang H, Oktaviani R, Kim S, Mardiastuti A, Choe JC. Do Javan gibbons (Hylobates moloch) use fruiting synchrony as a foraging strategy? Am J Primatol 2021; 83:e23319. [PMID: 34402078 DOI: 10.1002/ajp.23319] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/23/2020] [Revised: 06/16/2021] [Accepted: 07/27/2021] [Indexed: 12/29/2022]
Abstract
Tropical rainforests are characterized by a high diversity of plant species. Each plant species presents with differential phenological patterns in fruit production. In some species, all individual trees produce fruit simultaneously within clustered periods; whereas in others, each individual tree fruits at irregular time intervals. By observing this pattern, some primate species use the presence of fruits in one tree as a cue to find fruit in other trees of the same synchronously fruiting tree species. Here, we investigated whether the highly frugivorous Javan gibbons (Hylobates moloch) in Gunung Halimun-Salak National Park in Indonesia have knowledge of synchronous characteristics of fruiting trees and whether they can further distinguish fruit species with different synchrony levels, that is, tree species with highly synchronous fruiting patterns versus tree species with less synchronous fruiting patterns. Across 12 months we collected biweekly phenological data on 250 trees from 10 fruit species and observed Javan gibbons' visits to those species. We found that a fruit discovery in the beginning of fruiting seasons triggered gibbons to visit trees of the same fruit species. However, gibbons' visit rates did not differ between highly synchronous and asynchronous species. Our results suggest that Javan gibbons have knowledge of synchronous characteristics of fruiting trees in general, but they do not differentiate highly synchronous versus asynchronous fruit species. We speculate that Javan gibbons, who live in relatively small ranges with very low tree density of preferred fruit species, are likely able to track and remember fruiting states of individual trees without needing to distinguish fruit species with different synchrony levels. Moreover, gibbons may make little benefit of distinguishing highly synchronous versus asynchronous fruit species, probably due to gibbons' heavy use of asynchronous figs. Our study provides an insight into how gibbon's foraging strategies may have been shaped in response to their ecological environment.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Haneul Jang
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Rahayu Oktaviani
- Javan Gibbon Research and Conservation Project, Bogor, Indonesia.,Division of Ecoscience, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Sanha Kim
- Biodiversity Foundation, Seoul, South Korea
| | - Ani Mardiastuti
- Department of Forest Resources Conservation and Ecotourism, Faculty of Forestry and Environment, IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia
| | - Jae C Choe
- Division of Ecoscience, Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea
| |
Collapse
|
11
|
de Guinea M, Estrada A, Nekaris KAI, Van Belle S. Cognitive maps in the wild: revealing the use of metric information in black howler monkey route navigation. J Exp Biol 2021; 224:271801. [PMID: 34384101 PMCID: PMC8380465 DOI: 10.1242/jeb.242430] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/11/2021] [Accepted: 06/15/2021] [Indexed: 01/25/2023]
Abstract
When navigating, wild animals rely on internal representations of the external world – called ‘cognitive maps’ – to take movement decisions. Generally, flexible navigation is hypothesized to be supported by sophisticated spatial skills (i.e. Euclidean cognitive maps); however, constrained movements along habitual routes are the most commonly reported navigation strategy. Even though incorporating metric information (i.e. distances and angles between locations) in route-based cognitive maps would likely enhance an animal's navigation efficiency, there has been no evidence of this strategy reported for non-human animals to date. Here, we examined the properties of the cognitive map used by a wild population of primates by testing a series of cognitive hypotheses against spatially explicit movement simulations. We collected 3104 h of ranging and behavioural data on five groups of black howler monkeys (Alouatta pigra) at Palenque National Park, Mexico, from September 2016 through August 2017. We simulated correlated random walks mimicking the ranging behaviour of the study subjects and tested for differences between observed and simulated movement patterns. Our results indicated that black howler monkeys engaged in constrained movement patterns characterized by a high path recursion tendency, which limited their capacity to travel in straight lines and approach feeding trees from multiple directions. In addition, we found that the structure of observed route networks was more complex and efficient than simulated route networks, suggesting that black howler monkeys incorporate metric information into their cognitive map. Our findings not only expand the use of metric information during route navigation to non-human animals, but also highlight the importance of considering efficient route-based navigation as a cognitively demanding mechanism. Highlighted Article: Black howler monkeys rely on route-based cognitive maps, which constrain their movement decisions, but likely incorporate metric information to navigate more efficiently along frequently used routes.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Miguel de Guinea
- School of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, OX3 0BP, UK.,Movement Ecology Lab, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 91904, Israel
| | - Alejandro Estrada
- Institute of Biology, National Autonomous University of Mexico, CP 04510 Mexico City, Mexico
| | | | - Sarie Van Belle
- Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
| |
Collapse
|
12
|
Janmaat KRL, de Guinea M, Collet J, Byrne RW, Robira B, van Loon E, Jang H, Biro D, Ramos-Fernández G, Ross C, Presotto A, Allritz M, Alavi S, Van Belle S. Using natural travel paths to infer and compare primate cognition in the wild. iScience 2021; 24:102343. [PMID: 33997670 PMCID: PMC8101046 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.102343] [Citation(s) in RCA: 11] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Within comparative psychology, the evolution of animal cognition is typically studied either by comparing indirect measures of cognitive abilities (e.g., relative brain size) across many species or by conducting batteries of decision-making experiments among (typically) a few captive species. Here, we propose a third, complementary approach: inferring and comparing cognitive abilities through observational field records of natural information gradients and the associated variation in decision-making outcomes, using the ranging behavior of wild animals. To demonstrate the feasibility of our proposal, we present the results of a global survey assessing the availability of long-term ranging data sets from wild primates and the willingness of primatologists to share such data. We explore three ways in which such ranging data, with or without the associated behavioral and ecological data often collected by primatologists, might be used to infer and compare spatial cognition. Finally, we suggest how ecological complexity may be best incorporated into comparative analyses. Comparing animal ranging decisions in natural habitats has untapped potential How decisions vary with natural information gradients reveals wild animal cognition Ranging data on at least 164 populations of 105 wild primate species are available We present three thought analyses to compare cognition and explain its evolution
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Karline R L Janmaat
- Evolutionary and Population Biology, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.,Department of Cognitive Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands.,ARTIS Amsterdam Royal zoo, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
| | - Miguel de Guinea
- Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
| | - Julien Collet
- Oxford Navigation Group, Department of Zoology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
| | - Richard W Byrne
- Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, St Andrew, UK.,Scottish Primate Research Group, Scotland, UK
| | - Benjamin Robira
- Centre d'Écologie Fonctionnelle et Évolutive, Université de Montpellier, Montpellier, France.,Eco-anthropologie, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, CNRS, Université de Paris, Paris, France
| | - Emiel van Loon
- Theoretical and Computational Ecology, Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
| | - Haneul Jang
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Dora Biro
- Oxford Navigation Group, Department of Zoology, Oxford University, Oxford, UK.,Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, University of Rochester, Rochester, USA
| | - Gabriel Ramos-Fernández
- Department of Mathematical Modelling of Social Systems, Institute for Research on Applied Mathematics and Systems, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico.,Center for Complexity Sciences, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico
| | - Cody Ross
- Department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Andrea Presotto
- Department of Geography and Geosciences, Salisbury University, Salisbury, MA, USA
| | - Matthias Allritz
- School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK
| | - Shauhin Alavi
- Department for the Ecology of Animal Societies, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour, Konstanz, Germany.,Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany.,Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany
| | - Sarie Van Belle
- Department of Anthropology, University of Austin at Texas, Austin, TX, USA
| |
Collapse
|