Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Ontogeny of Complex Tool Use in Great Apes

人类进化的标志之一是创造和使用复杂的工具，但这种行为适应发展的具体机制尚未完全理解。这个博士论文项目将调查教学和模仿的作用，以及觅食工具使用的性别差异，在野生黑猩猩种群的工具技能的发展。黑猩猩是我们最亲近的亲戚，对它们的工具传统的研究为人类文化和技术的进化起源提供了独特的见解。该项目还将为学生提供实地研究和培训机会，并支持研究地点的大型猿类保护工作。 该项目的具体目标是区分黑猩猩获得复杂工具技能的社会学习机制，量化变量社会学习机会的影响，并评估工具技能获得性别差异的竞争假设。生活在刚果共和国古阿卢戈三角的黑猩猩表现出了非人类中最复杂的工具行为，这将是第一项研究它们如何学习这些技能的研究。将使用焦点和所有发生的采样进行直接观察，并通过黑猩猩使用工具的远程视频录像进行补充。 横截面和纵向的方法将被用来记录工具技能的个体发育。从这项研究中获得的见解将完善人类谱系中物质文化进化的模型。具体而言，研究结果将有助于解决有关社会学习如何影响种内行为多样性的争论，阐明如何在几代野生猿中保持复杂的工具传统，并澄清黑猩猩工具辅助觅食中性别分化的个体发生起源。

One of the hallmarks of human evolution has been the creation and use of complex tools, but the specific mechanisms by which this behavioral adaptation developed are not fully understood. This doctoral dissertation project will investigate the roles of teaching and imitation, as well as sex differences in foraging tool use, in the development of tool skills in a wild chimpanzee population. Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, and the study of their tool traditions provides unique insights into the evolutionary origins of human culture and technology. This project will also provide student field research and training opportunities and support great ape conservation efforts at the research site. The specific goals of this project are to differentiate the social learning mechanisms involved in chimpanzees' acquisition of complex tool skills, quantify the impact of variable social learning opportunity, and evaluate competing hypotheses for sex differences in tool skill acquisition. Chimpanzees of the Goualougo Triangle, Republic of Congo, exhibit some of the most complex tool behavior among nonhumans, and this will be the first study to investigate how they learn these skills. Direct observations using focal and all-occurrence sampling will be conducted and supplemented by remote video footage of chimpanzee tool use. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal approaches will be employed to document the ontogeny of tool skills. Insights from this study will refine models of the evolution of material culture in the hominin lineage. Specifically, results will help to resolve debates about how social learning influences intraspecific behavioral diversity, illuminate how complex tool traditions are maintained among wild apes over generations, and clarify the ontogenetic origins of sexual differentiation in tool-assisted foraging among chimpanzees.