Behavioural patterns of vocal greeting production in four primate species

Abstract

Social animals have evolved a range of signals to avoid aggressive and facilitate affiliative interactions. Vocal behaviour is especially important in this respect with many species, including various primates, producing acoustically distinct ‘greeting calls’ when two individuals approach each other. While the ultimate function of greeting calls has been explored in several species, little effort has been made to understand the mechanisms of this behaviour across species. The aim of this study was to explore how differences in individual features (individual dominance rank), dyadic relationships (dominance distance and social bond strength) and audience composition (presence of high-ranking or strongly bonded individuals in proximity), related to vocal greeting production during approaches between two individuals in the philopatric sex of four primate species: female olive baboons ( Papio anubis ), male chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ), female sooty mangabeys ( Cercocebus atys ) and female vervet monkeys ( Chlorocebus pygerythrus ). We found that female vervet monkeys did not produce greeting calls, while in the other three species, low-ranking individuals were more likely to call than high-ranking ones. The effects of dyadic dominance relationships differed in species-specific ways, with calling being positively associated with the rank distance between two individuals in baboons and chimpanzees, but negatively in mangabeys. In none of the tested species did we find strong evidence for an effect of dyadic affiliative relationships or audience on call production. These results likely reflect deeper evolutionary layers of species-specific peculiarities in social style. We conclude that a comparative approach to investigate vocal behaviour has the potential to not only better understand the mechanisms mediating social signal production but also to shed light on their evolutionary trajectories.

The origins of gestures and language: history, current advances and proposed theories

“…use of different types of uni‐ or multimodal signal combinations) (e.g. Arlet et al ., ; Lemasson et al ., ; Prieur et al ., ; Crockford, Wittig & Zuberbühler, ; Fröhlich et al ., ; Hobaiter, Byrne & Zuberbühler, ; Fedurek et al ., ).…”

“…Based on the literature and our findings (e.g. Arlet et al ., ; Lemasson et al ., ; Prieur et al ., ; Crockford, Wittig & Zuberbühler, ; Fröhlich et al ., ; Hobaiter, Byrne & Zuberbühler, ; Fedurek et al ., ), we propose the multicausal theory of language origins, postulating that primate communicative signalling stems from a cost–benefit trade‐off of signal production and processing of interactants in relation to four interrelated (evolutionary and life cycle) factors, namely species, individual and context‐related characteristics as well as behaviour and its characteristics. The perennial debate concerning the origins of language is presented below.…”

Olfactory detection and discrimination in domestic dogs (Canis lupus familiaris)

“…We fitted a generalised linear mixed-effects models (fitglme function in Matlab) with binomial error structure and logit link function to our complete dataset ( detection and discrimination task). We followed a model fitting procedure commonly accepted in the literature (Dobson and Barnett, 2018; Fedurek et al, 2019). To fully account for performance as response variable, we fitted four predictor variables: (1) breed of dog, (2) quantity of reward, (3) side of presentation, and (4) task ( detection vs discrimination ).…”

A socio-ecological perspective on the gestural communication of great ape species, individuals, and social units

“…An individual’s absolute and relative social rank has been shown to extensively impact great ape vocal communication. For example, chimpanzee pant-grunt vocalizations are almost exclusively produced by lower-ranking individuals, towards higher-ranking ones (Laporte & Zuberbühler 2010 ; Fedurek et al 2019 ), and higher-ranking males produce more pant-hoots than low ranking individuals (Mitani & Nishida 1993 ) and more vocalizations than other age-sex classes in general (Clark 1993 ). Higher ranking gorillas give more double-calls than lower ranking individuals (Harcourt & Stewart 1996 ), and in bonobos, low ranking females are more likely to produce copulation calls when interacting with higher ranking females during genito-genital rubbing (Clay & Zuberbühler 2012 ).…”

“…Social communications are key to an individual’s ability to develop and maintain social relationships with other group members. For example, chimpanzee pant-grunting has been suggested to reflect a caller’s interaction intent, exploring receiver’s motivation and mood, conveying respect (Laporte & Zuberbühler 2010 ), as well as a tool to avoid aggression (Fedurek et al 2019 , 2021 ). An individual’s absolute and relative social rank has been shown to extensively impact great ape vocal communication.…”