Disentangling the importance of social and ecological information in goal-directed movements in a wild primate

Guinea, Miguel de; Estrada, Alejandro; Janmaat, Karline R. L.; Nekaris, K.A.I.; Belle, Sarie Van

doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2020.12.017

Cited by 14 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 85 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…cliffs, emergent trees, ridges; Noser and Byrne, 2015;Presotto et al, 2018), suggesting that the cognitive process involved might be associative learning rather than path optimisation (Fernandes et al, 2018). Even though we did not explicitly test for the effect of visual memories in the movement decisions of black howler monkeys, previous research has shown an association between habitual routes and energy-saving terrain at Palenque National Park (de Guinea et al, 2019). Thus, while black howler monkeys likely benefit from optimizing the location of habitual routes over the course of multiple generations to minimize the cost of travelling across such a variant landscape, there may still be an effect of visual memories in the movement decisions of black howler monkeys that remains unexplored.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…terrain's slopes) could increase even more the overlap among simulated travel paths. Previous research at our field site revealed that black howler monkeys locate habitual route segments in areas that minimize the energetic cost of travelling while favouring the visual monitoring of potential food resources (de Guinea et al, 2019; see also Hopkins, 2011Hopkins, , 2013. Incorporating landscape attributes and the location of food resources in the movement decisions of the simulated agent is the next step to infer the level of cognition involved in the cognitive maps of black howler monkeys.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…For instance, the proximity of pasturelands, physical obstacles (i.e. water bodies, Mayan ruins) or canopy gaps could occasionally be constraining the accessibility options to specific revisited feeding trees (de Guinea et al, 2019;Fig. S5).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We selected five neighbouring groups of black howler monkeys (i.e. Balam, Motiepa, Naha, Pakal and Unites), which were composed of 4 to 11 individuals and had home ranges varying between 7.1 and 15.3 ha (de Guinea et al, 2019).…”

Section: Materials and Methods Study Site And Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They experience long retention rates in their digestive system, which reduces the availability of metabolic energy (Amato and Righini, 2015;Milton, 1981). Hence, developing a navigation strategy that would minimize energy expenditure while travelling would be highly beneficial for the species (de Guinea et al, 2019). While the evolution of sensorial adaptation such as systematic trichromatic colour vision benefits the acquisition of food resources (Jacobs et al, 1996), howler monkeys have been shown to rely on their cognitive skills during foraging as well (Fortes et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Cognitive maps in the wild: revealing the use of metric information in black howler monkey route navigation

Guinea

Estrada

Nekaris

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Biology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Materials and Methods Study Site And Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Cognitive maps in the wild: revealing the use of metric information in black howler monkey route navigation

Guinea

Estrada

Nekaris

et al. 2021

Journal of Experimental Biology

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Do Javan gibbons (Hylobates moloch) use fruiting synchrony as a foraging strategy?

Jang

Oktaviani

Kim

et al. 2021

American J Primatol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

It's about time: Feeding competition costs of sociality are affected more by temporal characteristics than spatial distribution

Ekanayake‐Weber,

Mathew,

Cunha

et al. 2024

Ecology and Evolution

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Disentangling the importance of social and ecological information in goal-directed movements in a wild primate

Cited by 14 publications

References 85 publications

Cognitive maps in the wild: revealing the use of metric information in black howler monkey route navigation

Cognitive maps in the wild: revealing the use of metric information in black howler monkey route navigation

Do Javan gibbons (Hylobates moloch) use fruiting synchrony as a foraging strategy?

It's about time: Feeding competition costs of sociality are affected more by temporal characteristics than spatial distribution

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About