I was recently invited to present at UCLA’s Center for Behavior, Evolution and Culture. I presented on my current research at the intersection of collective behavior and communication spanning projects from domesticated herds to wild baboons to human teams. While visiting the department I also had the opportunity to meet with many professors and students working across the fields of Anthropology, Biology and Social Sciences. It was also my first in-person talk in over two years so that was definitely something to celebrate!
Playbacks of Chimpanzee Food-associated Calls Attract Receivers
This summer, my study on the food-associated communication behavior of chimpanzees was published in the journal Primates. This study examined how acoustic playbacks of food-associated “rough grunt” vocalizations from one of two known, identical feeding sites impact the approach and feeding decisions of chimpanzees in a captive setting. We found that playbacks attracted listeners more often than expected by chance, while this was not the case for other species-specific vocalizations. Playbacks did not have any effect on the feeding decisions of receivers. These results support the hypothesis that rough grunts attract receivers but call into question whether this approach behavior is a response to information about food or rather social information conveyed by the signaler. Article PDF, supplemental materials and .zip files of the acoustic stimuli used in the playback study can be found here: PDF Supplemental Materials Rough Grunts Control Calls
Article first published here in Primates, 62, 905-918, 2021 by Springer Nature
Goats Don’t Vote: Article in New York Times
The New York Times published an article on our recent paper which developed a method for teasing apart different hypotheses for the behavioral mechanisms underlying group collective movement decisions. We tested this model on data I collected on free-ranging goats using dataloggers that contained gps, accelerometers / magnetometers and audio recorders. We did not find support for the hypothesis that goats “vote” with their body position. Rather, data support the hypothesis that they use a self-organized method of following other group members as they begin to move off. Our model will help to disentangle the behavioral methods involved in collective movement decisions in a variety of species.
Seminar for the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour
Earlier this month I had the opportunity to give a remote seminar to the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour in Konstanz, Germany. My talk provided an overview of my work studying communication and collective behavior in non-human and human animals. I also had the opportunity to have a coffee hour talk with the many researchers in Konstanz working on related topics. I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to present my work and get to exchange ideas with such an exciting research group!
Article Published in Royal Society Open Science
Our article was recently accepted in Royal Society Open Science. Our study involved the development and testing of a model that can aid differentiation between mechanisms used to initiate animal group movement decisions. The model differentiates between the hypothesis that animals use their body orientations to “vote” for their preferred direction of group travel and the hypothesis that animals use a more self-organized “follow-the-leader” approach. The model was tested with data on a herd of free-ranging goats inhabiting Tsaobis Nature Park in Namibia. The goats were equipped with wearable dataloggers consisting of GPS units and accelerometers/magnetometers. Results do not support the hypothesis that goats use their body positions to vote. Rather, they appear to follow the lead of other group members that begin to move off in a particular direction.
New Article Published in American Journal of Primatology
Our paper testing the Marginal Value Theorem in captive chimpanzees is out in the American Journal of Primatologists. Study participants adhered to some, but not all, predictions. Chimpanzees showed sensitivity to their rate of energy intake and they foraged longer in higher quality patches, supporting assumptions underlying many hypotheses for primate foraging and social behavior. However, chimpanzees foraged semi-systematically and did not depress patches to the same density, calling into question whether the marginal value theorem is a constructive model of chimpanzee foraging behavior.