Seminar of interest in St Andrews this Friday (7th) at 3:30pm in the Old Library.
Dr Erica van de Waal will deliver a talk titled:
Field experiments reveal the scope of social learning in vervet monkeys
Please read below for further details....Hannah
From: Andrew Whiten [mailto:aw2@st-andrews.ac.uk]
Sent: 05 November 2014 11:28
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Cc: Alexander Weiss (alex.weiss(a)ed.ac.uk) Anthony Little; Christine Caldwell; Craig Roberts; Cunningham, Clare (c.cunningham(a)abertay.ac.uk) Hannah Buchanan-Smith; Hardie, Scott (S.Hardie(a)abertay.ac.uk) James Anderson; Lusseau, David (d.lusseau(a)abdn.ac.uk) Phyllis Lee; Sarah Vick
Subject: Friday Seminar by Erica van de Waal on social learning in primates
Dear All (BDG List and SPRG Core) - I think many of you may be interested in this talk here on Friday - it will be based on the Tinbergen prize lecture Erica gave earlier at the European Conference on Behavioural Biology, but updated and expanded ...
We will go for a meal in Zizzi's at 6.30 so do please either sign up on the sheet I am putting in the Psych mail room, or email me to let me know - Andy W.
This week's Seminar will take place this Friday (7th) at 3:30pm in the Old Library.
Dr Erica van de Waal will deliver a talk titled:
Field experiments reveal the scope of social learning in vervet monkeys
Behavioural tradition has been an active topic in animal behaviour since the renowned Japanese macaque studies of half a century ago, yet controlled field experiments to clearly identify social learning in the wild began only recently. This talk describes a series of social learning experiments with our population of vervet monkeys in South Africa, which have now been studied for seven years. We follow over a hundred monkeys in several neighbouring groups.
In an experiment with wild vervet monkeys, Chlorocebus aethiops, inspired by the famous Japanese macaque food cleaning study, we found that naïve vervet monkey infants copy variations in how their mother handle sandy fruits. In a complementary study we adapted an established laboratory experimental paradigm to create 'artificial fruits' to test for copying of different actions. Earlier we demonstrated social learning from high ranking female models of which part of such a 'fruit' to forage from; now, we used a new artificial fruit ('vervetable') which can be opened either be sliding a door to the side or instead pulling it open. This thus tests for matching of the action used to access the reward inside. Pilot tests on four semi-captive vervet groups showed significant similarity to the technique initially demonstrated, both overall and on the first trial. Here we present 'vervetable' results for wild vervets, including identification of the social rules of whom to learn from and its broad implications for cultural transmission. In a further experiment, we showed experimentally that wild vervet monkeys will abandon personal foraging preferences in favour of group norms new to them. Groups first learned to avoid the bitter-tasting alternative of two foods. Presentations of these options untreated months later revealed all new infants naïve to the foods adopting maternal preferences. Moreover, males migrating between groups where the alternative food was eaten switched to the new local norm. Such powerful effects of social learning represent a more potent force than hitherto recognized in shaping group differences among wild animals. Our follow up studies have revealed that the time spent eating the local preference correlates with rank in adult females. Is it due to low ranked females being under pressure to be more exploratory? Or is it due to limited access to their preferred colour, as more dominant individuals monopolize it? We were able to test these hypotheses in our population because two group splits occurred, with three low ranking females leaving their origin group, to create their own group and became then alpha, beta and gamma in it. A significant change in foraging preference, converging on that of the previous dominant monkeys in their origin group, was observed after the group split, indicating how biased transmission may lead to population level traditions
As normal, the Seminar will be followed by an informal wine reception which all are welcome to attend.
