Dominance style is a key predictor of vocal use and evolution across nonhuman primates

Eithne Kavanagh (1, 2) , Sally Street (3) , Felix Angwela , Thore Bergman (4) , Maryjka Blaszczyk (5) , Laura Bolt (6) , Margarita Briseño-Jaramillo (7) , Michelle Brown (8) , Chloe Chen-Kraus (9) , Zanna Clay (3) , Camille Coye (10, 11) , Melissa Emery Thompson , Alejandro Estrada , Claudia Fichtel , Barbara Fruth , Marco Gamba , Cristina Giacoma , Kirsty Graham , Samantha Green , Cyril Grueter , Shreejata Gupta , Morgan Gustison , Lindsey Hagberg , Daniela Hedwig , Katharine Jack , Peter Kappeler , Gillian King-Bailey , Barbora Kuběnová , Alban Lemasson (11) , David Macgregor Inglis , Zarin Machanda , Andrew Macintosh , Bonaventura Majolo , Sophie Marshall , Stephanie Mercier , Jérôme Micheletta , Martin Muller , Hugh Notman , Karim Ouattara , Julia Ostner , Mary Pavelka , Louise Peckre , Megan Petersdorf , Fredy Quintero , Gabriel Ramos-Fernández , Martha Robbins , Roberta Salmi , Isaac Schamberg , Oliver Schülke , Stuart Semple , Joan Silk , J Roberto Sosa-Lopéz , Valeria Torti , Daria Valente , Raffaella Ventura , Erica van de Waal , Anna Weyher , Claudia Wilke , Richard Wrangham , Christopher Young , Anna Zanoli , Klaus Zuberbühler , Adriano Lameira , Katie Slocombe (1)

1 University of York [York, UK]
2 Nottingham Trent University
3 Durham University
4 University of Michigan [Ann Arbor]
5 University of Texas at Austin [Austin]
6 University of Waterloo [Waterloo]
7 UNAM - Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México = National Autonomous University of Mexico
8 UC Santa Barbara - University of California [Santa Barbara]
9 Yale University [New Haven]
10 University of Exeter
11 EthoS - Ethologie animale et humaine

Animal communication has long been thought to be subject to pressures and constraints associated with social relationships. However, our understanding of how the nature and quality of social relationships relates to the use and evolution of communication is limited by a lack of directly comparable methods across multiple levels of analysis. Here, we analysed observational data from 111 wild groups belonging to 26 non-human primate species, to test how vocal communication relates to dominance style (the strictness with which a dominance hierarchy is enforced, ranging from ‘despotic’ to ‘tolerant’). At the individual-level, we found that dominant individuals who were more tolerant vocalized at a higher rate than their despotic counterparts. This indicates that tolerance within a relationship may place pressure on the dominant partner to communicate more during social interactions. At the species-level, however, despotic species exhibited a larger repertoire of hierarchy-related vocalizations than their tolerant counterparts. Findings suggest primate signals are used and evolve in tandem with the nature of interactions that characterize individuals' social relationships.

Keywords: communication; dominance style; social behaviour; sociality; vocal

Domains: Cognitive science

Eithne Kavanagh, Sally Street, Felix Angwela, Thore Bergman, Maryjka Blaszczyk, et al.. Dominance style is a key predictor of vocal use and evolution across nonhuman primates. Royal Society Open Science, 2021, 8 (7), pp.210873. ⟨10.1098/rsos.210873⟩. ⟨hal-03331888⟩