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Female putty-nosed monkeys use experimentally altered contextual information to disambiguate the cause of male alarm calls

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Context_Arnold_Zuberbuhler.pdf (157.2Kb)
Date
05/06/2013
Author
Arnold, Kate
Zuberbuehler, Klaus
Keywords
QL Zoology
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Abstract
Many animal vocal signals are given in a wide range of contexts which can sometimes have little in common. Yet, to respond adaptively, listeners must find ways to identify the cause of a signal, or at least rule out alternatives. Here, we investigate the nature of this process in putty-nosed monkeys, a forest primate. In this species, adult males have a very restricted repertoire of vocalizations which are given in response to a wide variety of events occurring under conditions of limited visibility. We carried out a series of field playback experiments on females (N = 6) in a habituated group in Gashaka Gumti National Park, Nigeria, in which male alarm/loud calls were presented either alone, or following acoustic information that simulated the occurrence of natural disturbances. We demonstrate that listeners appear to integrate contextual information in order to distinguish among possible causes of calls. We conclude that, in many cases, pragmatic aspects of communication play a crucial role in call interpretation and place a premium on listeners' abilities to integrate information from different sources.
Citation
Arnold , K & Zuberbuehler , K 2013 , ' Female putty-nosed monkeys use experimentally altered contextual information to disambiguate the cause of male alarm calls ' , PLoS ONE , vol. 8 , no. 6 , e65660 . https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065660
Publication
PLoS ONE
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0065660
ISSN
1932-6203
Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2013 Arnold and Zuberbühler. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
Funding was provided by The Leverhulme Trust (http://www.leverhulme.ac.uk/). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Collections
  • Centre for Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution Research
  • Institute of Behavioural and Neural Sciences Research
  • Psychology & Neuroscience Research
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/3674

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