[BERG] BERG seminar this Wednesday, 16:00 (online)

Dear BERGers, This Wednesday, Elodie Freymann (University of Oxford) will be giving a seminar entitled "Applying Collocation and APRIORI Analyses to Chimpanzee Diets: methods for investigating non-random food combinations in primate self-medication". Please find the abstract below. This will be an online seminar. This is the last BERG seminar this semester! We will start a new series in the Fall. Abstract: Historically, the study of animal self-medication has focused on identifying novel medicinal resources through recognizing unusual or characteristic behaviors like leaf-swallowing or bitter pith chewing. While it is easy to consider these therapeutic self-medicative behaviors isolated occurrences, it is premature to rule out the notion that primate self-medication is a more holistic phenomenon. Rather, like humans, chimpanzees may be using multiple self-medicative resources throughout the duration of a given illness, or within a short period of time, a concept we call the Self-Medicative Food Combination Hypothesis. Identifying non-random resource combinations can, therefore, illuminate potentially synergistic relationships between medicinal resource candidates. In this talk, I will present analytical tools with which such a hypothesis can be tested, in a novel context, to investigate frequently occurring food combinations within the Budongo chimpanzee diet. Specifically, I will evaluate the use of Collocation and APRIORI analyses as effective exploratory tools for identifying binary combinations, and APRIORI as an effective for multi-item rule associations, using a case study from my own data. If non-random food associations can be identified in long-term data sets, a new paradigm for evaluating feeding ecology may be needed. One which evaluates primate diets as holistically calculated rather than as opportunistically encountered. MSTeams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/dl/launcher/launcher.html?url=%2F_%23%2Fl%2Fmee… ------------------------------- Dr Pawel Fedurek (he/his) Lecturer in Psychology Behaviour and Evolution Research Group (BERG) Division of Psychology, Faculty of Natural Sciences University of Stirling Stirling, FK9 4LA Scotland, UK Tel: +44 (0)1786 467844<tel:+441786467844> Twitter: @fedurekp<https://twitter.com/fedurekp> @BERG_Stirling​<https://twitter.com/BERG_Stirling> Staff page<https://www.stir.ac.uk/people/1080868> | BERG page<https://www.stir.ac.uk/about/faculties/natural-sciences/our-research/research-groups/behaviour-and-evolution-research-group/> I aim to reply within 3 working days (my working days are between Monday and Friday). ________________________________ Scotland’s University for Sporting Excellence The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159