Doctoral Dissertation Improvement: Modeling the Origins of Primate Sociality: Do Mouse Lemurs Recognize Kin Through Vocalizations?

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Arguments of human uniqueness emphasize our complex sociality, unusual cognitive capacities, and language skills, but the timing of the origin of these abilities and their evolutionary causes remain unsolved. Unlike the largely solitary ancestral mammals, the first primates are thought to have maintained social networks, communicating via vocalizations and scent marks. These networks may have facilitated selection for increased cognitive and communicative abilities at the very emergence of the primate order by providing a medium for kin selection (selection caused by behavior benefiting kin). Unfortunately, the mechanisms by which ancestral primates might have recognized kin are unknown. This study will be the first test of vocal recognition of kin in a species used to model ancestral primates, the grey mouse lemur. Innovative, sophisticated methodology includes marking wild lemurs with transponders and conducting playback experiments at feeding platforms containing transponder readers. With respect to intellectual merit, this project is multidisciplinary, encompassing socioecology, anthropology, bioacoustics, conservation, and field methodology. The project will have great theoretical value for reconstructions of primate origins and will investigate the feasibility of developing novel conservation tools using vocalizations to monitor kin groups of small, nocturnal mammals. The broader impacts are in conservation, education and international collaboration. These lemurs are vulnerable, not only because forest degradation in Madagascar is estimated to have exceeded 90% since the arrival of humans, but also because they are not well understood. Increased knowledge of their social systems will help tailor conservation plans to their needs. The co-PI will integrate this project into science education by creating a webpage so her NSF GK-12 students can follow the research as it progresses. The project will develop new collaborations between German, Malagasy, and American researchers. It will train a field assistant and a Malagasy student in skills vital for launching careers in research, conservation, or park management.