Evidence map›Paper›PMID 26510675›Full record

ArticleBiology letters2015

Grooming-at-a-distance by exchanging calls in non-human primates.

Malgorzata Arlet, Ronan Jubin, Nobuo Masataka, Alban Lemasson

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Biology letters, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
23citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

23 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Article
  4. Assessing flexibility in meaning and context in non-human communication.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025
    Review
  5. In pop pursuit: social bond strength predicts vocal synchrony during cooperative mate guarding in bottlenose dolphins.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024
    Article
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
  9. Flexible use of contact calls in a species with high fission-fusion dynamics.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022
    Article
  10. Article
  11. Article
  12. Review
  13. Article
  14. Article
  15. Review
  16. Application of the hierarchical bootstrap to multi-level data in neuroscience.Neurons, behavior, data analysis, and theory · 2020
    Article
  17. Article
  18. Flexible usage and social function in primate vocalizations.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2018
    Review
  19. Article
  20. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Malgorzata ArletAnimal and Human Ethology Research Unit-C.N.R.S, Université de Rennes 1, Paimpont, France School of Biology, Indian Institute for Science education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram, India maarlet@yahoo.com.
Ronan JubinAnimal and Human Ethology Research Unit-C.N.R.S, Université de Rennes 1, Paimpont, France.
Nobuo MasatakaCognition and learning section, Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan.
Alban LemassonAnimal and Human Ethology Research Unit-C.N.R.S, Université de Rennes 1, Paimpont, France Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

The 'social bonding hypothesis' predicts that, in large social groups, functions of gestural grooming should be partially transferred to vocal interactions. Hence, vocal exchanges would have evolved in primates to play the role of grooming-at-a-distance in order to facilitate the maintenance of social cohesion. However, there are few empirical studies testing this hypothesis. To address this point, we compared the rate of contact call exchanges between females in two captive groups of Japanese macaques as a function of female age, dominance rank, genetic relatedness and social affinity measured by spatial proximity and grooming interactions. We found a significant positive relationship between the time spent on grooming by two females and the frequency with which they exchanged calls. Our results conform to the predictions of the social bonding hypothesis, i.e. vocal exchanges can be interpreted as grooming-at-a-distance.

Indexed as

GroomingSocial BehaviorVocalization, AnimalAge FactorsAnimalsFemaleMacacaSocial DominanceSpatial Behaviorcall exchangedominance rankgroomingkinshipmacaques

Identifiers

PMID26510675
PMCPMC4650185

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.