he neural mechanisms responsible for making decisions, approached with a panoply of behavioral, physiological and genetic techniques. His current research aims to examine genetic and endocrinological factors underlying individual variation in social behaviors and the processing of social information in rhesus macaques. This research is part of a larger effort to develop an animal model of complex social behavior which can be used as a model to understand human behavior, including pathologies such as autism.
Economic and social decision-making in rhesus monkeys
Dr. Alexandra Rosati, University of Michigan
This project will examine how rhesus macaques make decisions in order to understand the evolution of human-like economic behavior and self-control. Decision-making pervades human life, from assessing whether to save or invest money, to choosing whether to give into temptation and eat a slice of cake. These types of decisions often have parallels with wild behaviors, as foraging animals must assign value to different possible options, make trade-offs between costs and benefits, and deal with conspecifics who are trying to solve the same problems. As these complex skills often show significant changes across the lifespan in humans, we will therefore examine monkey decision-making across early development, adulthood, and aging in order to understand the ontogenetic trajectories of decision-making across species.
Rethinking complexity in facial communication systems
Dr. Jerome Micheletta, University of Portsmouth
Communication is a defining feature of sociality, and faces potentially offer others a wealth of information about identity, emotion and intention. Despite this, we know little about what makes facial communication complex, and how to distinguish between species that have sophisticated facial communication, and those that do not. Addressing these issues will allow us to better understand the evolution of complex communication, including our own. The aim of this research project is to develop and test a new methodology to analyse communication via the face. We will combine the Facial Action Coding System (an anatomically-based system designed to break-down facial expressions into their most basic observable units, the contraction of individual facial muscles) with Social Network Analysis (a method to measure relationships between units in a system) to develop a novel framework to study communication via the face: NetFACS. In NetFACS, facial expressions will be conceptualised as a network of facial muscles, interacting to produce communication. This method will take into account the dynamic nature of facial expressions and therefore, better reflect its complexity. Once developed, we will use NetFACS to test the hypothesis that social complexity drives the evolution of facial communication complexity by comparing four closely related macaque species, including rhesus macaques at Cayo Santiago Field Station.
Mechanisms of Paternal Kin Discrimination
Dr. Anja Widdig, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and University of Leipzig
To date, there is limited information on the impact of paternal relatedness upon the evolution of social behavior, and of its underlying mechanisms. Therefore the aim of this study is to investigate the mechanisms and cues rhesus macaques use to identify their paternal kin. To do so we combine long-term behavioral, demographic and genetic data to distinguish between the two most likely mechanisms: familiarity and phenotype matching. Furthermore, we investigate potential cues used such as visual, odor, and acoustics via different experimental approaches conducted in the field.
The role of gastrointestinal parasites in rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta) behavior and sociality: Implications for wildlife management
Carla Escabi, MA, PhD(c), Caribbean Primate Research Center, University of Puerto Rico
This research investigates the relationship of gastrointestinal parasites with social and reproductive behavior in a habituated population of rhesus macaques in Cayo Santiago Island, Caribbean