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

该项目旨在了解在居住在热带大草原-林地马赛克的黑猩猩身上发现的裂变融合社会中，个体如何相互协调行动。这需要了解多个个体如何在一定距离内相互同步移动。在裂变聚变社会中，个体形成亚群，其组成通常取决于季节和活动，在黑猩猩的背景下，亚群被称为政党。当进入捕食风险高或食物丰富的区域时，这些群体经常融合在一起，不同性别和年龄段的分组模式得到了很好的记录。在这些融合事件期间，关联和对抗的关系可能会重新建立，因此它们可能是紧张和混乱的事件。此前的研究发现，森林中的成年雄性黑猩猩通过经常保持彼此之间的听觉距离来保持对彼此空间位置的了解，这样它们就可以在面临潜在危险的情况下相互合作。然而，虽然政党间通信已被确立为一种协调模式，但谁是呼叫者，以及更有趣的是，谁是响应者，仍有待调查。这可以让我们深入了解如何根据个人的社交网络和在群体中的地位，通过个人之间的沟通来实现合作。然而，当承认呼叫者、接受者和应答者之间行为状态的差异时，这可能会更加复杂。此外，个体并不总是保持在彼此的听觉距离内，因此可能会基于对该地区资源分布的共享生态知识来预测彼此的行动。因此，除了听觉之外，可能还有其他线索，如生态和认知，可能会影响群体的运动和协调。了解个体和子群体之间相互协调的机制，可以让我们深入了解个体如何在将成本降至最低的同时，优化群体生活的好处。

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.