Acquisition and use of social information in wild Assamese macaques (A03)

• Subject Area: Sensory and Behavioural Biology
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 454648639

A building block of social cognition is social monitoring, i.e., attending to conspecifics and their social interactions, leading to better-informed decision-making for subsequent interactions. This field project on wild macaques in Thailand will close gaps in our understanding of selective attention by tracking head-gaze towards different spontaneously unfolding interactions of other group members, assessing hormonal correlates of inter-individual variation in attention, and determining the resulting consequences for social network position, and ultimately for individual fitness.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1528: Cognition of Interaction
• Applicant Institution: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
• Project Heads: Professorin Julia Ostner, Ph.D.; Privatdozent Dr. Oliver Schülke, Ph.D.