POWRE: Vocal communication in Cebus Capucinus

这个项目将对一系列关于猴子的社会知识和决策标准的假设进行实验测试。其中一组实验将集中在战术欺骗的问题上--这种现象在类人猿和一些东半球猴子中得到了很好的记录，但在新大陆灵长类动物中几乎从未报道过。具体地说，白脸卷尾猴是一种新世界灵长类动物，他们将接受测试，看看当它们跟随模拟的社交情景时，它们是否认为报警信号不那么可信，在这种情况下，报警的人会有欺骗的动机-具体地说，就是分散参与攻击性联盟反对他或她的高级猴子的注意力。另一组实验将集中在男性决定是否对群体外男性的声音威胁做出攻击性反应的标准上。该项目建立在通过使用发声回放的观察性研究中获得的知识基础上。研究人员将在哥斯达黎加花几个月的时间进行观察，并收集进行回放实验所需的录音。卷尾猴的社会关系和社会认知是一个有趣的研究领域，因为目前人们对灵长类智力的进化感兴趣。卷尾猴的大脑相对于它们的身体是所有非人类灵长类动物中最大的，因此在关于灵长类大脑扩张背后的主要驱动力是空间记忆和提取觅食灵活性的选择性压力还是解决复杂社会问题的能力的辩论中，卷尾猴代表了一个关键的数据点。该项目将提供有关新大陆灵长类物种社会认知和社会关系的宝贵数据，这些数据可以与旧大陆灵长类物种关于这类问题的大量数据进行比较。这一奖项将使研究人员能够学习新的技术技能，特别是生物声学分析和回放实验方案。它还将为研究人员提供资金，用于进行实验，以测试她研究智力进化的方法的可行性。

This project will test experimentally a set of hypotheses about monkeys' social knowledge and decisionmaking criteria. One set of experiments will focus on the issue of tactical deception-a phenomenon that has been well documented among apes and some Old World monkeys but virtually never reported in New World primates. Specifically, white-faced capuchins, a New World primate species, will be tested to see whether they find alarm calls less credible when they follow a simulated social situation in which the alarm caller would have a motive to deceive-specifically, a motive to distract the attention of higher-ranking monkeys engaged in an aggressive coalition against him or her. The other set of experiments will focus on the criteria involved in males' decisions about whether to respond aggressively to vocal threats by extra-group males. The project builds on the knowledge that has been gained in observational studies by using playbacks of vocalizations. The investigator will spend several months in Costa Rica conducting observations and collecting the recordings needed for conducting playback experiments. The social relationships and social cognition of capuchin monkeys are an interesting domain of inquiry because of current interest in the evolution of primate intelligence. Capuchins have the largest brains, relative to their bodies, of any nonhuman primates and therefore represent a key data point in the debate about whether the principal driving force behind primate brain expansion was selective pressure for spatial memory and extractive foraging dexterity or for the ability to solve complex social problems. This project will contribute valuable data on social cognition and social relationships in New World primate species that can be compared to the already extensive array of data on such issues in Old World primates. This award will enable the investigator to learn new technical skills, specifically bioacoustic analysis and playback experiment protocols. It will also provide funds for the investigator to conduct experiments to test the feasibility of her approach to the study of the evolution of intelligence.