How groups in a group move: Understanding coordination of fission fusion dynamics of chimpanzees in a Savannah-Woodland mosaic

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The project aims to understand how individuals move in coordination with each other in a fission fusion society found in chimpanzees inhabiting a savannah-woodland mosaic. This would entail understanding how multiple individuals can synchronously move in relation to one another from a distance. In fission fusion societies individuals form sub groups whose compositions are often season and activity dependent, in the context of chimpanzees sub-groups are referred to as parties. These parties often fuse together, when entering spaces of high predation risk or those of high food abundance, with grouping patterns of different sexes and age classes being well documented. During these fusion events relationships, both affiliative and antagonistic, may be re-established, as such they can be tense and chaotic events. Previous research has found that adult male chimpanzees in forests maintain knowledge of each-others spatial position by often staying within auditory distance of each other, so that they may provide cooperation to one another when faced with potentially dangerous situations. However, whilst inter-party communication has been established as a mode for coordination, who the callers, and more interestingly, who the responders are have yet to be investigated. This can provide us insights into how cooperation via communication between individuals can arise based on their social networks and position in the group. However, this may be further complicated when acknowledging differences in behavioural states between callers, receivers and responders. Furthermore, individuals do not always stay within auditory distance of each other and so may be anticipating each others' movements based on the shared ecological knowledge of the distribution of resources in the area. Therefore, there may be other cues besides auditory such as ecological and cognitive that may shape group movement and coordination. Understanding the mechanisms by which individuals and sub-groups coordinate between each other can provide us insights into how individuals can optimise the benefits of group living while minimising the costs.