POWRE: Vocal communication in Cebus Capucinus

这个项目将通过实验测试一系列关于猴子社会知识和决策标准的假设。一组实验将聚焦于战术欺骗的问题——这种现象在猿类和一些旧大陆的猴子中有很好的记录，但在新大陆的灵长类动物中几乎从未报道过。具体来说，白脸卷尾猴，一种新世界的灵长类动物，将会接受测试，看它们是否会发现，当它们遵循一个模拟的社会情境时，发出警报的人会有欺骗的动机——具体来说，是一个分散高级猴子注意力的动机，这些猴子正在联合起来攻击它或她。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积极反应的标准上。该项目建立在通过使用发声回放在观察研究中获得的知识的基础上。调查人员将在哥斯达黎加进行几个月的观察和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动物智力的进化感兴趣。卷尾猴的大脑相对于身体而言是所有非人类灵长类动物中最大的，因此，在关于灵长类动物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压力，还是解决复杂社会问题的能力的争论中，卷尾猴代表了一个关键的数据点。该项目将为新大陆灵长类物种的社会认知和社会关系提供有价值的数据，这些数据可以与旧大陆灵长类动物在这方面的大量数据进行比较。该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协议。它还将为研究者提供资金进行实验，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.