Divergent personality structures of brown (Sapajus apella) and white-faced capuchins (Cebus capucinus).

Abstract

One way to gain insights into personality evolution is by comparing the personality structures of related species. We compared the personality structure of 240 wild white-faced capuchin monkeys to the personality structure of 100 captive brown capuchin monkeys. An ancillary goal was to test the degree to which different personality questionnaires yielded similar personality dimensions. Both species were rated on a common set of 26 antonym pairs. The brown capuchin monkeys were also rated on the 54-item Hominoid Personality Questionnaire. Our cross-species comparisons revealed three personality dimensions---Assertiveness, Openness, and Neuroticism---shared by brown and white-faced capuchins, suggesting that these dimensions were present in the common ancestor of these species. Our comparison of the dimensions derived from the antonym pairs and the Hominoid Personality Questionnaire revealed that three common dimensions were identified by both questionnaires. In addition, the dimension Attentiveness was only identified using the Hominoid Personality Questionnaire. These results indicate that major features of capuchin personality are conserved and that the structure of some traits, such as those related to focus, persistence, and attention, diverged. Further work is needed to identify the evolutionary bases that led to the conservation of some dimensions but not others.

A multi‐institutional assessment of a short‐form personality questionnaire for use with macaques

“…For the ratings of the 63 monkeys, there were 21 of the 3,611 trait ratings missing (0.5%). This data loss is comparable to previously‐published studies (e.g., Robinson et al, reported that 2.7% of items were not rated), including studies of zoo‐housed primates (e.g., Weiss et al, reported that <1% of items were not rated). Therefore, and following Robinson et al (), we replaced missing ratings with the overall mean for that item.…”

“…Following Robinson et al (), all analyses were conducted using the “psych” (Revelle, ) package in R version 3.3.2 (R Core Team, ) run in RStudio (RStudio Team, ). Specifically, the principal components analysis was run using the fa function (50 iterations and with the quartile cut point set to 0.95) and a scree plot was generated using the fa.parallel function and we sorted the components using the fa.sort function.…”

Hormonal correlates of behavioural profiles and coping strategies in captive capuchin monkeys (Sapajus libidinosus)

“…In humans, men and women who score higher in 'Openness' are more able to deal with the psychosocial stress of public speaking (Caramaschi et al, 2013). In analyses of primate personality, more 'open' animals were classified as more curious, creative and playful (Morton et al, 2013;Robinson et al, 2016;Manson and Perry, 2013). Byrne and Suomi (2002) also describe that semicaptive capuchin monkeys evaluated as curious show lower cortisol levels.…”

In search of a meaningful classification for Amazonian marmosets: Should dwarf marmosets be considered Mico congenerics?

“…; Martins et al. ; Robinson et al., ; Young & Heard‐Booth, ; Fedigan, ). The divergence time between the Sapajus and Cebus clades was estimated at 6.2 Ma (Lynch‐Alfaro, Boubli, et al., ) and the widespread sympatry was explained by a rapid diversification during the Pliocene followed by expansion and invasion by the Atlantic Forest Sapajus of the Amazon basin, where currently species of the two genera occur in sympatry (Lynch‐Alfaro, Boubli, et al., ).…”

“…These morphological and ecological differences in robust and gracile capuchins monkeys (Lynch-Alfaro, Silva, et al, 2012) agree with the biogeographical analyses presented in Lynch-Alfaro, Boubli, et al (2012) to advocate placing species of these two groups into the genera Sapajus and Cebus, respectively. This taxonomic classification was largely adopted thereafter (Bezerra et al 2014;Martins et al 2015;Robinson et al, 2016;Young & Heard-Booth, 2016;Fedigan, 2017). The divergence time between the Sapajus and Cebus clades was estimated at 6.2 Ma (Lynch-Alfaro, Boubli, et al, 2012) and the widespread sympatry was explained by a rapid diversification during the Pliocene followed by expansion and invasion by the Atlantic Forest Sapajus of the Amazon basin, where currently species of the two genera occur in sympatry (Lynch-Alfaro, Boubli, et al, 2012).…”