2010 Vol 101.pdf (1.63mb) - Primate Society of Great Britain

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now make it possible to quantify entire animal social networks, and ‘Social Network Analysis’ (SNA) techniques are ripe for the picking by ‘chimpologists’, and indeed other primatologists. This study investigated the social structure of captive chimpanzees housed at Edinburgh Zoo, UK. Patterns of association and interaction among individuals were sampled using focal observations and scans of sub-groups (parties). Social network diagrams (sociograms) were produced from spatial association, and interaction data. Comparisons were made within and between networks, and cluster analysis was used to identify sub-grouping within networks. There were four main findings. (1) Matrix correlation tests showed that individuals preferred to associate and interact affiliatively with their maternal kin, and individuals spent time close to those with whom they had an affiliative bond. (2) Cluster analysis revealed significant sub-groups related to agonistic encounters, and parties frequently changed over time and space. (3) The community exhibited a low level of ‘fission-fusion’ behaviour because parties frequently changed over time and space. (4) The dominant female held highly central positions in both affiliative and agonistic networks, and was pivotal to group cohesion. This study used SNA techniques to study chimpanzee social structure at a number of levels, from individual to community, and I encourage other researchers to use SNA in pure and applied contexts. Constraints on cumulative culture in chimpanzees L.G. Dean 1 , R.L. Kendal 2 and K.N. Laland 1 1. School of Biology, University of St Andrews, Fife, U.K. 2. Department of Anthropology, Durham University, Durham, U.K. Most researchers agree that humans are the only species with cumulative culture. A number of hypotheses have been proposed to explain this difference, but few studies have explicitly tested them. Here we used a cumulative puzzle-box, which could be solved to gain three sequentially better rewards. We tested 76 chimpanzees in 8 groups with trained demonstrator seeded and unseeded open diffusion experiments. We also presented the puzzle-box to 35 children in 8 groups in unseeded open diffusion experiments. Of the 76 chimpanzees there were only four that learned to open the puzzle-box beyond the first, simplest, stage accessing only the least desirable food reward. In only one group did more than one chimpanzee learn to access the higher stages of the puzzle-box. In contrast, multiple children, both across and within groups, accessed the higher, more difficult, stages of the puzzle-box to access the more desirable sticker rewards. By analysing when and how animals manipulated the puzzle-box and learned to use it, we assess which hypotheses our data are consistent with. Accordingly we posit that a lack of imitation, teaching and cooperation in chimpanzees inhibits the evolution of cumulative culture. 8
The case for a common gestural repertoire among great apes: evidence from the wild chimpanzees C. Hobaiter and R.W. Byrne Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution and Scottish Primate Research Group, School of Psychology, University of St Andrews We compare and contrast the results from captive work on gestural communication in all great apes with observations from the first systematic study of gestural communication in wild chimpanzees, a 2-year study of the Sonso community in Budongo, Uganda. We describe the gestural repertoire of wild chimpanzees. Until recently, the acquisition of great ape gestures has been accepted to derive from ontogenetic ritualization, with communicative gestures shaped from effective actions by mutual conditioning between dyads of individuals. Biologically inherited gestures were considered to be a minor subset of gestures used inflexibly and without intention (Tomasello et al., 1985, 1994). This view has recently been challenged with data on gorilla gesture (Genty et al., 2009). Here we use evidence from wild chimpanzees, and a meta-analysis of the existing great-ape literature, to propose an alternative model of flexible, intentional gestural communication in terms of species-typical chimpanzee gestures and a family-typical repertoire of great-ape gesture. Non-linguistic vocal behaviour in human infants (Homo sapiens): primatological perspective V.Kersken, J.C.Gomez and K. Zuberbühler School of Psychology, University of St Andrews In order to examine whether infants between the ages of 7 and 20months selectively produce certain non-linguistic vocalizations in specific contexts, we observed the vocal behaviour of 30 infants in one of their natural habitats – a nursery environment. We identified the contexts in which vocalization occurred and conducted an analysis of the acoustic features of the vocalizations in five distinct contexts: protests, requests for food or actions, vocalizations co-occurring with declarative pointings, and accompanying acts of giving objects to others. A discriminant function analysis was conducted on different acoustic variables of each of the 209 calls and could correctly classify 56.8% of the call types. We conducted a Monte Carlo simulation and found that the model could classify significantly more cases correctly than a randomly generated data set (chi squared = 26.99, df = 1, p> .0001). The results suggest that prelinguistic infants do produce vocal behaviours selectively in certain contexts and that these classes of vocalizations might serve specific functions be. Although this is not a complete description of infant vocal behaviour, it nevertheless suggests some homogenous classes of non-linguistic vocalizations that are systematically related to their production context and therefore could 9
Page 1 and 2: Primate Society of Great Britain No
Page 3 and 4: EDITORIAL This time last year, I co
Page 5 and 6: REPORT: PSGB Spring Meeting 2010 So
Page 7 and 8: REPORT: Pre-PSGB Spring Meeting Wor
Page 9: PSGB Spring Meeting 2010 Social Cog
Page 13 and 14: produced by similar genetic changes
Page 15 and 16: Application of the comparative meth
Page 17 and 18: that might illustrate cognitive dif
Page 19 and 20: Exploring social arenas for forest
Page 21 and 22: humans and such brain asymmetries m
Page 23 and 24: integration as a promoter of social
Page 25 and 26: consistently observed conspecifics
Page 27 and 28: enclosures (81% of studies) and lon
Page 29 and 30: greater bamboo lemur (Prolemur simu
Page 31 and 32: Future Meetings PSGB Winter Meeting
Page 33 and 34: Announcement: International Symposi
Page 35 and 36: CONSERVATION GRANT REPORTS Ecology
Page 37 and 38: Conducting hunter interviews (Fabe
Page 39 and 40: The low encounter rate of tarsiers
Page 41 and 42: Students with the principal investi
Page 43 and 44: ushmeat market. A weekly average of
Page 45 and 46: -5.545, p = 0.000) and that the slo
Page 47 and 48: of different ages and sexes, highli
Page 49 and 50: on callitrichid males’ responses
Page 51 and 52: empowering local communities living
Page 53 and 54: Part III discusses ecological diver
Page 55 and 56: governments, researchers and the pu
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2010 Vol 101.pdf (1.63mb) - Primate Society of Great Britain

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