title: Does the Structure of Female Rhesus Macaque Coo Calls Reflect Relatedness and/or Familiarity?
abstract: In social animals, kin relations strongly shape the social structure of a group. In female-bonded species, maternal relatedness is likely to be mediated via familiarity, but evidence is accumulating that non-human primates are able to recognize kin that they are not familiar with and adjust their behavior accordingly. In playback experiments, female rhesus macaques showed increased interest in 'coo' calls produced by unfamiliar paternal half-sisters compared to 'coo' calls produced by unfamiliar unrelated females, suggesting that these calls should have some common structural characteristics that facilitate the discrimination of kin from non-kin. Here we analyzed 'coo' calls of 67 adult female rhesus macaques from four groups and seven matrilines living on the island of Cayo Santiago (Puerto Rico). We tested whether the call structure of closely maternal and/or paternal related females, as determined from extensive pedigree data, differed from the call structure of unrelated females, while controlling for familiarity (i.e., group-matrilineal membership and age difference) of subjects. In contrast to our expectation, kinship did not predict similarities in 'coo' call structure, whereas 'coo' structure was more similar when produced by females of similar age as well as by females with higher familiarity, suggesting that experience is more decisive than genetic background. The high number of individuals in the analysis and the high accuracy of the assignment of calls to individuals render a lack of power as an unlikely explanation. Thus, based on the results of this study, kin recognition in rhesus monkeys does neither appear to be based on the assessment of self-similarity, nor on the comparison among related subjects (i.e., acoustic phenotype matching), but appears to be mediated by different or multiple cues. Furthermore, the results support the notion that frequent social interactions result in increasing acoustic similarity within largely innate call types ('vocal accommodation').
authors: Behavioural Ecology Research Group, Institute of Biology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.|Junior Research Group of Primate Kin Selection, Department of Primatology, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.|Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany.|Leibniz-Science-Campus Primate Cognition, German Primate Center & Georg-August-University-Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
authors: Dana
authors: D
authors: Pfefferle
authors: Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany.
authors: Kurt
authors: K
authors: Hammerschmidt
authors: Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
authors: Roger
authors: R
authors: Mundry
authors: Junior Research Group of Primate Kin Selection, Department of Primatology, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.|Caribbean Primate Research Center-Cayo Santiago, University of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico, United States of America.
authors: Angelina V
authors: AV
authors: Ruiz-Lambides
authors: Leibniz-Science-Campus Primate Cognition, German Primate Center & Georg-August-University-Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.|Cognitive Ethology Laboratory, German Primate Center, Göttingen, Germany.
authors: Julia
authors: J
authors: Fischer
authors: Behavioural Ecology Research Group, Institute of Biology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.|Junior Research Group of Primate Kin Selection, Department of Primatology, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
authors: Anja
authors: A
authors: Widdig
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005260:Female; D008253:Macaca mulatta; D014828:Vocalization, Animal / Q000502:physiology*